I'm using Expect to automate an sftp session with a site that only uses passwords, not ssh keys. It worked fine until it tried retrieving an oversized file. The session log indicated the connection "stalled" too much traffic & users on remote site and my script terminated. I tried upping the timeout parm in the comand '$exp->expect(600, "sftp>");' that's waiting for the sftp prompt once the file get is done, but it didn't help. It bombed well before the 10 minutes passed. Since I can expect the transmission to stall almost every time, I can't just use a loop to check the session log and try again. Is there anything deeper in Perl or Expect that I could use to help my script cope with stalled transmissions? Thanks, in advance, for any ideas or suggestions. ------------------------------ at the risk of violating a posting rule on over-bloated questions, here is the script. It reads in a file of the actual sftp commands but they are just vanilla puts or gets mostly. ------------ 
use strict;
use Expect;

my $sftpPassword = "useracctPW";
open FTP_CARDS, "$ARGV[0]/sftp_CMS.cards" or die $!;

# Uncomment the following line if you want to see what expect is doing
# $Expect::Exp_Internal = 1;

# Create the Expect object and create the message log file.
my $params = " -oPort=10022 useracct\@sftp.section111.cms.hhs.gov";
my $command = "/usr/bin/sftp $params";
my $exp = Expect->spawn("$command") or die "Cannot spawn sftp command 
+\n";

$exp->timeout(600);

## [this does not append ]$exp->log_file("$ARGV[0]/sftp_CMS.log", "w")
+;
$exp->log_file("$ARGV[0]/sftp_CMS.log");
$exp->log_stdout(0);

# Wait for Password prompt to show up then send it back
$exp->expect(30, ["Password:"]);
## $exp->expect(30, ["useracct\@sftp.section111.cms.hhs.gov's password
+:"]);
$exp->send("$sftpPassword\n");

# Execute each sftp command found in the input file of commands
while (my $ftp_command = <FTP_CARDS>) {
   # Wait for sftp prompt
   $exp->expect(600, ["sftp>"]);
   $exp->send("$ftp_command\n");
}

# Destroy the expect object
$exp->soft_close();

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In reply to My Perl/Expect script aborts when sftp connection stalls at remote destination by c84032002

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