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up vote 2 down vote favorite

I am new to shell scripting. When I want to run a bunch of Linux commands I do fine, but how do I give user input when another script is called and asks for input while it runs. Here is the situation where I am stuck. I install the same server setup in classrooms frequently so I want to completely automate it.

#!/bin/bash
sudo apt-get install python -y
sudo apt-get install python-m2crypto -y
sudo apt-get install git-core -y
git clone https://github.com/learningequality/ka-lite.git
cd ka-lite/
./setup_linux.sh

#the script works until here
#now, while the setup script is running, the following needs to happen
#I need to press enter twice
#enter the password twice
#press enter twice
#press y and then enter

#here are some things I tried, none of them worked
send "yes\n"
send "yes\n"
#echo | <Press [enter] to continue...> #enter
#echo | <return> #enter
Password8 #password
Password8 #password
echo | <yourfinecommandhere> #enter
echo | <return> #enter
y
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3  
If password entry is involved, you probably need a tool like expect. –  celtschk Jun 24 at 20:08
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1 Answer

up vote 3 down vote

You can use TCL Expect or Perl::Expect. After trying them both I prefer the later because I am more familiar with Perl.

This is a snipped of a script that I use to ssh into several test servers (not recommended for sensitive production servers):

if( defined $password ) {
  $exp->expect(
    $timeout,
    [   qr/no\)\?\s+$/i => sub {
        my $self = shift;
        $self->send("yes\n");
        exp_continue;
      }
    ],
    [   qr/password:\s+$/i => sub {
        my $self = shift;
        $self->send("$password\n");
        exp_continue;
      }
    ],
    '-re',
    qr/~/,    #' wait for shell prompt, then exit expect
  );
}

You can look at the full source here: https://github.com/DavidGamba/bin/blob/master/cssh

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