Script a telnet session (Windows XP SP2)

Topic

New Reply

My network router has a problem which I can work around by logging in on a telnet session and issuing some commands. I need to reissue these commands anytime the router is reset, so I would like to create a .BAT file that automates this.

Can anyone share an example of a simple .BAT file that connects via telnet and passes commands via the telnet session?

(here is a log of me issuing these commands manually, IP address and username changed to protect my privacy)

C:> telnet 10.0.0.254

Username : userx
Password : ************
_{userx}=>system config digestauth disabled
{userx}=>saveall
{userx}=>exit

Connection to host lost.

C:> EXIT

StuartR

Reply | Quote

Replies

Stuart

I’ve done this with FTP, but never with Telnet, so I don’t know how it will react.

Basically you would create a ‘command’ file via a BATch file, then point it at Telnet.

(
echo userx
echo password
echo system config digestauth disabled
echo saveall
echo exit
) > telnet.lns

telnet 10.0.0.254 < telnet.lns

Try the concept with something innocuous (e.g. just do userx/password/exit as the first test!)

Reply | Quote

Unfortunately the telnet client doesn’t seem to read from the input file at all. This isn’t helped by the fact that the telnet client starts by clearing the screen!

For a very simple test, I created a file called telnet.txt with username, password and exit, I then entered the command
telnet < telnet.txt

from a command prompt and it responded by clearing the screen and outputting

Welcome to Microsoft Telnet Client

Escape Character is 'CTRL+]'

Microsoft Telnet> Microsoft Telnet>
C:Temp>


Regardless of what text I put in the “input file” I just get this same output.

StuartR

Reply | Quote

I don’t know if it’s of any use in your situation, but PuTTY: a free telnet/ssh client allows you to Save then Load telnet sessions, to produce the sort of result you’re looking for.

Alan

Reply | Quote

Alan,

PuTTy won’t do what I need, because it’s a GUI product, but the PuTTy page had a command line tool called plink that did exactly what I needed when combined with John’s instructions for redirecting the input stream.

Thanks to both of you.

StuartR

Reply | Quote

Sorry, I have used plink myself, but mixed the tools when I referenced them.

Alan

Reply | Quote

I have used PuTTy before, as an interactive SSH client, and nearly replied saying that it wouldn’t do what I needed, lucky I actually looked around on their web site first! Thank you.

StuartR

Reply | Quote

Stuart

Glad the combined effort produced satisfactory results! (In 25 years of playing with PCs and servers I think I have used Telnet just once…)

Reply | Quote

Telnet used to be my favourite tool for testing early web servers, just telnet to port 80 and get index.htm

StuartR

Reply | Quote

Strange coincidence. I was just trying that method to reveal the “real” URL in a tinyurl link (as per Scriptlets for URL preprocessing). I can’t get a port 80 connection though. Maybe they got sick of everyone telnetting their server ???

Alan

Reply | Quote