

SSH/Telnet passwords will be sent and saved in clear text unless you specify a key file for authentication.
ACTIVETCL RUN TCL SCRIPT WINDOWS

Instead, we will call Tcl and instruct it to call PuTTY with the required command and parameters. However, in order to add the “Expect Script” functionality to our flows, we will not directly call (PuTTY) from our workflows. So bear with me a little longer with this introduction, it will make things easier afterwards.īehind the scenes, System Center Orchestrator user plink (PuTTY) to execute SSH Commands using the “Run SSH Command” activity, so we will do the same, since PuTTY is a very dependable SSH/Telnet client, you could use any incarnation of OpenSSH if you prefer. While Tcl as a concept is a little beyond the scope of this article, we must understand some basic concepts about the role Tcl plays in our little scenario. While the “Expect Script ” methodology is not very well documented, it is available in many incarnations, one of which exists as a feature in a tool called “ActiveTcl”.ĪctiveTcl is a “Tool Command Language”, which is some sort of a scripting language that is dedicated to controlling and commanding other tools. This expect script for example would reply to a couple of prompts asking the user for first and last name within the script. Other technologies, like for example HP’s Operations Orchestration, has introduced the use of what is known as “Expect Scripts”, which would simply guide the shell into sending different commands once it has recognized certain text or regular expression in the StdOut of the shell.įor example it would go something like this:
ACTIVETCL RUN TCL SCRIPT PASSWORD
Or maybe, the script is expected to ask for a username and password to connect to a FTP server, how then would you supply these inputs, without actually changing the script itself? While this is great for executing straight forward commands and scripts, it lacks the ability to interact with the shell and maybe execute different options or commands based on how this script actually goes. System Center Orchestrator ships with an activity called “Run SSH Command”, which is great for executing a single command, or a script file to a Unix/Linux machine. One of these gaps that needs to be filled is automating SSH, Telnet, and Batch scripts. As promising as System Center Orchestrator is with all the Integration Packs that are being developed every day, there still are some gaps to fill to be able to compete in specific scenarios in the real world.
