in reply to Net-SSH-W32Perl hanging

Folks-

I spent a few days tracking this down (I really like Net::SSH::Perl and friends) and believe I have a solution.

Hope it helps.

-Craig

Short answer

A bug was introduced in Net::SSH::Perl (in version 1.34 and maybe earlier), that breaks Net::SSH::W32Perl, and gives you the symptom above. I will be submitting a bug report.

More Details

The bug appears in the file:
c:\Perl\site\lib\Net\SSH\Perl.pm

In order to fix the problem, I modified these lines: 

    my $proto_class = join '::', __PACKAGE__,
        ($proto == PROTOCOL_SSH2 ? "SSH2" : "SSH1");

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To look like this (what the original code was): 
   my $proto_class = $ssh->protocol_class($proto);

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This fixes the problem for me.

Even More Details

If you are using Net::SSH::W32Perl to access the Net::SSH::Perl modules from your windows PC, the original Net::SSH::Perl code would correctly set 

$proto_class='Net::SSH::W32Perl::SSH2'

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The new version 1.34 of Net::SSH::Perl will incorrectly set 
$proto_class='Net::SSH::Perl::SSH2'

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which causes Net::SSH::W32Perl all sorts of grief, and your remote commands end up hanging.

Some folks have asked for a recipie for installing Net::SSH::Perl & friends on a PC. Here is how I do it...

  • Execute the MSI from the Activestate website on your PC to install a clean version of the latest perl (I use 5.8.9.825)
  • Setup a proxy (if needed): set HTTP_proxy=http://my.proxy.com:8888
  • Run ppm
  • Setup ppm for Activestate to be your only repository (unselect all others)
  • Add the latest IO-Select-Trap module
  • View & upgrade all upgradable packages
  • Setup tcool (from Suggested list) as your only repository
  • Add the latest Net-SSH-Perl and Math-BigInt-GMP (for Crypt-DSA) modules
  • Setup uwinnipeg (from Suggested list) as your only repository
  • Add the latest Net-SSH-W32-Perl module
  • Modify the Perl.pm file as stated above
  • Run the following test script 
    use strict;
use warnings;

use Net::SSH::W32Perl;

# Set $HOME (if not set), to avoid another Net::SSH::Perl bug...
if(! $ENV{HOME}) { $ENV{HOME}='c:\\' };

my $ssh=Net::SSH::W32Perl->new('myhost.com');

$ssh->login('myuser', 'mypasswd');

my ($stdout, $stderr, $exit) = $ssh->cmd('uname -a; date; uname -a');

print STDERR "exit=$exit\n";
print STDERR "STDERR: $stderr\n" if $stderr;
print STDERR "STDOUT: $stdout\n" if $stdout;

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