execute a program on a remote machine python

Question

I can execute a script from python environment locally using subprocess but due to cross platform issues, I have to execute it on a remote server and get back the results on my local machine.

The directory parserpath contains some third party modules that can be executed using a script run.sh present in parserpath directory. However this parserpath directory is present on a remote server. This is what I have, but this will work only if parserpath is a local directory. How can I ssh to a remote directory and run the script run.sh?

def run_parser(filename):

     current_dir = os.getcwd()
     parser_path="/parserpath"
     os.chdir(parser_path)
     subprocess.call("./run.sh " + filename, shell=True)
     os.chdir(current_dir)

tdelaney · Accepted Answer · 2015-11-22 18:58:43Z

With most linux shells, you can run a command in a different working directory by executing a subshell as in

/home/usr> (cd /usr/local/bin;pwd)
/usr/local/bin
/home/usr>

You can do the same thing through ssh to the remote system. Depending on which ssh client you use, you may thin that up a bit. For instance, with paramikos exec_command, a new remote shell is created for each command so cd /path/on/remote/machine;./run.sh is sufficient.

A minimalist example for paramiko on python 2.x is

import sys
import paramiko

try:
    hostname, username, password, targetpath = sys.argv[1:5]
except ValueError:
    print("Failed, call with hostname username password targetpath")

command = "cd {};pwd".format(targetpath)
print("Command to send: {}".format(command))

ssh = paramiko.SSHClient()
ssh.set_missing_host_key_policy(paramiko.AutoAddPolicy())
ssh.connect(hostname=hostname, username=username, password=password)
stdin, stdout, stderr = ssh.exec_command("cd {};pwd".format(targetpath))
print(stdout.read())
ssh.close()

python3 should be similar. There are other options like libssh2 bindings for python, pexpects ssh support and etc...

user5070125 · Accepted Answer · 2015-11-22 03:01:57Z

1

Use SSH keys to automate the process of logging in via SSH. Here is the following code to execute a script remotely.

ssh = subprocess.Popen(["ssh", "%s" % HOST, COMMAND],
                   shell=False,
                   stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
                   stderr=subprocess.PIPE)

answered Nov 22, 2015 at 3:01

user5070125

2 Comments

AMisra Over a year ago

but I need to change the working directory to a directory in the remote machine. How can I do that?

user5070125 Over a year ago

For the purpose of simplicity, I would just execute the strict in your home directory. However, if you do not want to do that, I suggest passing the absolute path of the script you want to run, that negates the need to change directories. Look at this link for more direction: gist.github.com/bortzmeyer/1284249. The libraries required for managing an active SSH connection are needlessly complex for your specific use case.

hariK · Accepted Answer · 2015-11-22 03:21:22Z

0

Try, ssh user@host sh path/run.sh

answered Nov 22, 2015 at 3:21

hariK

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