Documentation

expect - Executes a command and responds to prompts

New in version 2.0.

Synopsis

  • The expect module executes a command and responds to prompts
  • The given command will be executed on all selected nodes. It will not be processed through the shell, so variables like $HOME and operations like "<", ">", "|", and "&" will not work

Requirements (on host that executes module)

  • python >= 2.6
  • pexpect >= 3.3

Options

parameter required default choices comments
chdir
 no
cd into this directory before running the command
command
 yes
the command module takes command to run.
creates
 no
a filename, when it already exists, this step will not be run.
echo
 no
Whether or not to echo out your response strings
removes
 no
a filename, when it does not exist, this step will not be run.
responses
 yes
Mapping of expected string/regex and string to respond with. If the response is a list, successive matches return successive responses. List functionality is new in 2.1.
timeout
 no 30
Amount of time in seconds to wait for the expected strings

Examples

# Case insensitve password string match
- expect:
    command: passwd username
    responses:
      (?i)password: "MySekretPa$$word"

# Generic question with multiple different responses
- expect:
    command: /path/to/custom/command
    responses:
      Question:
        - response1
        - response2
        - response3

Notes

Note

  • If you want to run a command through the shell (say you are using <, >, |, etc), you must specify a shell in the command such as /bin/bash -c "/path/to/something | grep else"
  • The question, or key, under responses is a python regex match. Case insensitive searches are indicated with a prefix of ?i
  • By default, if a question is encountered multiple times, it’s string response will be repeated. If you need different responses for successive question matches, instead of a string response, use a list of strings as the response. The list functionality is new in 2.1

Status

This module is flagged as preview which means that it is not guaranteed to have a backwards compatible interface.

Support

This module is community maintained without core committer oversight.

For more information on what this means please read Module Support

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