I'm putting together a script which should take a users password, and the option of linux or hpux. Then go out to a collection of computers (Either HP or Linux) find one that isn't being used and start some software for the user on it.

At the moment I am able to connect to another computer using expect with an ssh command:
$timeout = 1;
$command = '/usr/bin/ssh';

@paramaters = ('servername','pwd');

$exp = Expect->spawn($command, @paramaters)
    or die "Cannot spawn $command: $!\n";

$exp->expect($timeout, [ qr/password/ ]);
$exp->send("password\n");

$exp->soft_close();

[download]

This will nicely go through all the steps that I want it to. However I have yet to figure out how to collect data from this effort (In this case the output of 'pwd'). I've tried things like:
$output = $exp->exp_after();

# and

$output = $exp->expect($timeout, [ qr/password/ ]);

# and

$output = $exp->send("password\n");

[download]

none of these however seem to put anything into $output
The reason that I want to collect output is to test it to see if the software is running on the system (If it is, it is considered used.)

ssh (the perl module) isn't too viable, as I would need to get it installed on an HPUX system. And I would prefer to avoid that world of excitment for the moment. But who knows.

ssh keys are less viable, as a bunch of random people will be using the script.

Well thank you for any help.
Michael

In reply to Collecting output from Expect by paranoid times

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