Use of send_command to send multiple commands on one line separated by a semicolon

Hi, I need to send a “reload” (reboot) command over the SSH CLI to a network switch., however I need the Switch to delay sending the reload command for a minute. This is to allow all the switches in a resilient loop to receive the reboot command even if a switch earlier in the chain reboots first.

I’m using netmiko together with multiprocessing to send the command “ping ip 10.26.7.253 count 12 timeout 5; reload” So each switch should ping a non-existent address on the subnet and timeout for a minute before executing the reload command. So my reload function looks like this

def fReload(deviceip, user, password):
	print("Reloading: "+user+"@"+deviceip)
	try:                                # establish a connection to the device
		ssh_connection = ConnectHandler(
		device_type='linux',
		ip=deviceip,
		username=user,
		password=password,
		banner_timeout=10000,
		auth_timeout=10000,
		conn_timeout=10000
		)
	except Exception as err:
		exception_type = type(err).__name__
		now = datetime.now()
		dt_string = now.strftime("%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S")
		write_file = open('Failed.txt','a')
		write_file.write("\n"+dt_string+": Failed to send reload to: "+deviceip+" exception: "+exception_type)
		print("Failed to connect to - ", deviceip+" exception: "+exception_type)
		write_file.close()
	else:
		# delay reboot to allow all devices to receive command
		try:	# this command should timeout as reload command will not return to prompt
			dotidx = deviceip.rfind('.')
			badip = deviceip[0:dotidx] + '.253'
			print ('badip = ', badip)
			cmd_reload = 'ping ip ' + badip + ' count 10 timeout 5;reload'
			print('sending ' + cmd_reload + ' to device ' + deviceip) 
			output = ssh_connection.send_command(cmd_reload) 
		except Exception as err:
			exception_type1 = type(err).__name__
			print("Exception sending reload command to - ", deviceip+" exception: "+exception_type1)
		else:
			print("sent reload command to device... ", deviceip)
		ssh_connection.disconnect()	# disconnect quickly to avoid error, as remote end will be rebooted
		now = datetime.now()
		dt_string = now.strftime("%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S")

		Results = dt_string+": Reloaded "+deviceip
		print(Results)

		write_file = open('Result.txt','a')
		write_file.write("\n"+Results)
		write_file.close()

The main program then calls this in a thread for each device in the list

	for device in devices:
		t = threading.Thread(target=fReload, args=(device, user, password,))
		t.start()
		threads.append(t)

I expect each command to fail with a timeout exception because the expected prompt string is never returned, but it doesn’t, it passes without exception. How will send_command treat the semicolon? I need it to be sent as one command. All I need to do is get the switch to delay rebooting itself for a minute. Is this possible?

Many thanks David

[davejmyers]

Thanks again, Kirk, I think it’s working now that I cleaned up my test network. I’m getting an OSError exception rather than a specific Timeout error, but I guess that’s for the same reason ie no prompts returned after the reload command…

[ktbyers]

Okay, let me know if you are still seeing a problem here.

Just re-open the issue if you are.