could I use getpwent to parse the output of $user?

No, and if all you want are the usernames you need nothing so fancy anwyay.

#!/usr/bin/env perl 
use strict;
use warnings;

my $user = <<EOT;
root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
bin:x:1:1:bin:/bin:/sbin/nologin
daemon:x:2:2:daemon:/sbin:/sbin/nologin
adm:x:3:4:adm:/var/adm:/sbin/nologin
lp:x:4:7:lp:/var/spool/lpd:/sbin/nologin
sync:x:5:0:sync:/sbin:/bin/sync
shutdown:x:6:0:shutdown:/sbin:/sbin/shutdown
halt:x:7:0:halt:/sbin:/sbin/halt
EOT

chomp ($user); # as you have done
$user =~ s/:.*$//mg;
$user =~ s/\n/,/g;

print "hostname,$user\n";
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... and don't start doing master_opts => [-o => "StrictHostKeyChecking no" ] without very good reason.

THank you what is the meaning of the two lines you added:

$user =~ s/:.*$//mg;
$user =~ s/\n/,/g;
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Those are substitutions with regular expressions. The first one removes everything from the first colon to the newline character while the second turns the newlines into commas.

See Pattern Matching, Regular Expressions, and Parsing in our tutorials section, perlretut and perlre in perldoc for some references.

Same thing hippo did but more idiomatic and less readable. :P

say join ",", "hostname", $user =~ /^([^:]+)/gm;
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Hello garcimo,

Fellow Monk hippo answered your question already, but I would like to add some comments since you post your question.

Why you use 190 (passwords, username connections)? First of all it is less secure and second you use too many unnecessary resources, use ssh keys.

Second point of view, 190 connections will take more time and in case of one node is down you need to wait until timeout and proceed to next if not blocked. why not use Net::OpenSSH::Parallel?

Sample of code for both modules using ssh keys can be found here Re: Perl script works differently from Apache then CMD line.

Hope this helps, BR.

hello, I have a parallel script that i was trying to do :

chomp (my @hosts = `cat /.root/sample.txt`);

my $pssh = Net::OpenSSH::Parallel->new();

$pssh->add_host($_, user=> $user_name,
                master_stderr_discard =>1,
                master_opts => [-o => "StrictHostKeyChecking no" ]) fo
+r @hosts;

$pssh->push('*', command => 'egrep "^dba|^sea|^adm|^mwa|^ae" /etc/pass
+wd');
$pssh->run;
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I use ssh keys where possible but the ssh public key is not added in all 190 servers.

I do not use 190 different password.. just one that can connect to all the servers

I cannot capture the output of the /etc/passwd found and produce a csv.. that is why I did not went through with parallel.. if you have a solution.. please let me know

Hello again garcimo,

Sorry for the late reply but I got busy and I missed your reply. Let's go through line by line what you said.

I do not use 190 different password.. just one that can connect to all the servers

I do not know if you use WindowsOS but in case you are using LinuxOS I would create a script and do the following (pseudo code):

#!/usr/bin/perl
use Expect;
use strict;
use warnings;

my @devices = ("127.0.0.1", "localhost");

my $command = 'ssh';
my @params = ('-p', 22);

# These is to bypass the prompt of each node for new ssh connection.
foreach my $device (@devices) {
    # create an Expect object by spawning another process
    push @params, $device;
    my $exp = Expect->spawn($command, @params);
    $exp->send("yes");
}

# Second step do the same with ssh-copy-id (ssh keys)
# You said that all nodes share the same password so it should be very
+ easy to create ssh keys for all nodes from the main node.
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The idea of the script is to bypass the ssh prompt on all nodes and then create ssh keys on all nodes. See also relevant question SSH - Key Authentication for more information on that.

After that it is upon you if you want to capture the output of each node on different file stored in specific dir or append each node on one file.

If in any case my description is complicated comment under and I will try to reply with more details on the part that you do not understand.

Hope this helps, BR

Seeking for Perl wisdom...on the process of learning...not there...yet!

Hi, you could solve this in perl alone but this is also a practical use for parallel-ssh with a snip of perl to make your report.

apt install pssh
parallel-ssh -h HOSTNAMES_TXT -o /tmp/users 'cut -d: -f1 /etc/passwd'
perl -le '
    for my $file (@ARGV) {
        my ($host) = $file =~ m{/([^/]+)$};
        open my($fh), $file
           or die "Error opening $file: $!";
        my @users = <$fh>;
        chomp @users;
        print join(",", $host, @users) . "\n";
    }
' /tmp/users/*
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this is a new mission I got and yeah the former sys admin administer each server passwd locally. so I need to clean up all the one that have left the cie and still on the passwd and indeed move to ldap.