Shell Programming and Scripting

I am attempting to utilize an expect script (that is called from a parent bash script) to perform a file transfer over sftp.

The script works except I cannot catch timeouts. I need to be able to tell in the parent bash script when the expect script has timed out, or completed successfully.

It is called in my bash script with:

Code:

expect -f ./sftp.exp

Here is what I have:

Code:

set timeout 30
spawn sftp user@serverip
  expect "password: "
  send "password"
  expect "sftp> "
  send "lcd /data/\n"
  expect "sftp> "
  send "put file.txt\n"
  expect "*100%*"
  expect "sftp> "
  send "quit\n"
  expect eof
timeout { exit 2 }

We have this running in production and normally it does not cause any problems. However lately it has been timing out and checking $? in the parent bash script only returns 0. We are running AIX 5.3 if that makes any difference.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Do you really need SFTP? Why don't you use SCP? It is over the same protocol, SSH!

I had the same problem with FTP, the return code: $? was always 0, so I tried to map all the errors that could happen: "connection timedout", "lost connection", ... and parsed the output of the verbose execution: -vvv.

Something like:

Code:

sftpLogFile="./SFTP_Exec.log"
sftp -vvv user@serverip... >> "${sftpLogFile}"
# After, validate the ./SFTP_Exec.log

Also, why do you need a expect script to do a SFTP? Why don't you use a passwordless ssh

Anyway, I hope it helps!

The requirement for SFTP comes from this transfer going to a third party. We are forced to use that.

Also since they are a third party the use of shared keys is not available.

So, I think the option you have is to use the "-vvv" option and parse sftp's output, as I commented!