Scrapli send_commands

[tybruno]

Hello,

Can the send_commands handle all the different configuration modes and interactive mode commands for Cisco IOS devices? I am either going to build a web app or cli that uses send_commands to allow users at run time to input the devices they want to connect to and the commands they want to run. In this case, the tool should be able to run any type of command. Basically, this tool would run a batch of commands on multiple devices.

send_commands(["show cdp nei", "conf t", "crypto key zeroize","y","exit","write erase","y","show run"]

Use case:
As a networking engineer, I want to be able to input the cli commands (show , configuration, and interactive) on a list of devices, so that I don't have to login to each device manually to run the same commands.

[carlmontanari]

Hey @tybruno

Sorta kinda this probably could work... on network drivers we compile a pattern that matches all privilege levels of a device, and because of that we shouldn't really ever not find a prompt we are happy with. That said, the main idea w/ scrapli things is send_command(s) for "command" things and send_configs for "config" things... and when you use send_command(s) scrapli will auto acquire your platforms default_desired_privilege_level, so that kinda throws things outa whack for what you are after...

I think my general recommendation if you are wanting to bypass the "normal" scrapli prompt/privilege level type behavior would be to just create a custom platform based on the GenericDriver that has a comms_prompt_pattern that matches all privilege levels. Making this would be pretty trivial, and you could even get it added over in scrapli community if you were so inclined. This is used just for scrapli testing, but it actually does work w/ a Cisco WLC -- your generic driver setup could pretty much be exactly this, but for the comms prompt pattern you would just have a pattern that matches every privilege on the device.

Hopefully that makes sense! If not, can clarify tomorrow/later after I get some sleep 💤 🙂

Carl

[tybruno]

@carlmontanari Thank you for the reply!

That is exactly what I am working for. If I have this platform based on this GenericDriver would I have to make it every type of device or is it generic enough that since it doesn't care about the privilege levels it can work with almost all platforms?

Once I have my version of the GenericDriver all I would need to do next is use send_commands with eager = True?

haha thanks again for your help :) I hope you got some good sleep.

[carlmontanari]

If I have this platform based on this GenericDriver would I have to make it every type of device or is it generic enough that since it doesn't care about the privilege levels it can work with almost all platforms?

This really depends on how vague you want to get on the comms_prompt_pattern.

The default pattern for the generic driver is ^\S{0,48}[#>$~@:\]]\s*$ -- so its already pretty lose and should match for many devices/privilege levels.

Heres a working example for IOSXE (and probably EOS) -- you can see we dont need to do anything to the comms prompt pattern it "just works".

from scrapli.driver import GenericDriver

def main():
    conn = GenericDriver(host="some_host")
    conn.open()
    print(conn.get_prompt())
    conn.send_command("configure terminal")
    print(conn.get_prompt())
    conn.send_command("end")
    print(conn.get_prompt())
    conn.send_command("disable")
    print(conn.get_prompt())

    conn.channel.write("exit")
    conn.channel.send_return()
    conn.close()


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

You could get crazy with the comms_prompt_pattern to make it much more explicit -- or less... whatever you need to do! scrapli's job is basically to work with the pattern you give it and provide you with the api to send whatever ya want! Do note that if the pattern matches too much or too little things can and will break -- so you need to be sure that the pattern you use is solid! Hopefully this will work for ya!

Carl

[tybruno]

@carlmontanari No worries, I noticed you made a lot of good changes this version. If you do support that feature please let me know. I would definitely use it and would help test it.

[carlmontanari]

@carlmontanari No worries, I noticed you made a lot of good changes this version. If you do support that feature please let me know. I would definitely use it and would help test it.

Will do dude!

[tybruno]

@carlmontanari hey man! Hope you are doing well. Just wondering, is this feature still on your radar?

[carlmontanari]

hey dude! probably not to be honest. im not doing anything related to networking day-to-day anymore, defo would help on getting pr merged but to be honest it would probably be a fairly big one so that may be rough. I think shorter term/best option is to send channel log to a buffer and slurp what you want out of that!

[tybruno]

No worries :) Thank you for the quick response. Sounds good. I'll look into that.