using subprocess to ssh and execute commands

Question

I need to ssh into the server and execute few commands and process the response using subprocess. Here's my code

command = 'ssh -t -t buildMachine.X.lan; sudo su - buildbot ; build-set sets/set123'
print "submitting command"
result = subprocess.Popen(command, shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stdin=subprocess.PIPE)
print "got response"
response,err = result.communicate()
print response

This is getting stuck. I have seen other threads talking about passing a list instead of string to subprocess and removing shell=True.. I did that too but didn't work.

Ultimately I need the result of last command i.e. build-set in order to extract some information out of it.. help?

You need to pass the commands you want to execute remotely to ssh as the last argument, not as additional commands separated by ;. — univerio
– univerio, Commented Aug 14, 2014 at 23:52
@AshuPachauri yes - the private key is already stored in my machine so don't need to provide password again. — nick01
– nick01, Commented Aug 14, 2014 at 23:58
@user2812714 You have to do ssh host 'foo bar' to run foo bar remotely. If you do ssh host; foo bar you're running ssh host locally, waiting for ssh to exit, then executing foo bar locally. — univerio
– univerio, Commented Aug 15, 2014 at 0:19
You really do want to split it up into a list and not use shell=True. It's hard enough to figure out how to split up ssh arguments vs. remote-host arguments without having to deal with an extra layer of quoting. — abarnert
– abarnert, Commented Aug 15, 2014 at 1:01

nick01 · Accepted Answer · 2014-08-15 01:04:38Z

1

I figured the solution by using univerio's comment

The command needs to be

command = 'ssh -t -t buildMachine.X.lan \'sudo su - buildbot  \'build-set sets/set123\'\''

Individual commands are like argument to previous command. This works.

answered Aug 15, 2014 at 1:04

nick01

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