[Fab-user] Fabric doesn't play well with Force10 devices

[James Redmond]

Hi all,

First post to this mailing list, please forgive any faux pas I may unintentionally make.

I'm having trouble getting Fabric working with Force10 devices, and I was hoping you could help. Google has failed me! It would seem that the connection does not complete to Fabric's standards, yet using Paramiko alone works fine - see here: http://pastebin.com/yJgh26KS. I would prefer to use Fabric for many reasons, mostly Force10 is not the only brand of hardware that it will be interfacing with.

Here is an example of the problem:

address@hidden:~/$ cat fabfile.py 

#!/usr/bin/env python
from fabric.api import run, env

 

env.user = 'admin'
env.hosts = ['10.1.1.1']
env.passwords = {'10.1.1.1':'password'}

 

def uptime():
    run("show version")

address@hidden:~/$ fab uptime
[10.1.1.1] Executing task 'uptime'
[10.1.1.1] run: show version
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/fabric/main.py", line 739, in main
    *args, **kwargs
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/fabric/tasks.py", line 317, in execute
    multiprocessing
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/fabric/tasks.py", line 213, in _execute
    return task.run(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/fabric/tasks.py", line 123, in run
    return self.wrapped(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/home/james/projects/robot3/test/fabfile.py", line 9, in uptime
    run("show version")
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/fabric/network.py", line 535, in host_prompting_wrapper
    return func(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/fabric/operations.py", line 1015, in run
    warn_only=warn_only, stdout=stdout, stderr=stderr, timeout=timeout)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/fabric/operations.py", line 891, in _run_command
    stderr=stderr, timeout=timeout)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/fabric/operations.py", line 752, in _execute
    channel.exec_command(command=command)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/paramiko/channel.py", line 218, in exec_command
    self._wait_for_event()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/paramiko/channel.py", line 1122, in _wait_for_event
    raise e
paramiko.SSHException: Channel closed.
Disconnecting from 10.1.1.1... done.

address@hidden:~/$ fab -V
Fabric 1.6.1
Paramiko 1.10.1
address@hidden:~/$ python --version
Python 2.7.3

address@hidden:~/$ uname -a
Linux host 3.2.0-24-generic #39-Ubuntu SMP Mon May 21 16:52:17 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux 

 

It's worth noting that there is a long pause (timeout, I've tried increasing it) before the traceback. I've tried connecting to a Force10 E600i, an S25N, S50V, S50N, S25P and a S4810, the problem is the same across the board. Just using SSH works fine, there's a pastebin of a verbose SSH session into one here: http://pastebin.com/c3RVBHE5 

I've compared the verbose SSH log from connecting to a Ubuntu box, to connecting to a Force10, there aren't many differences, especially not ones that leaped out at me as being a good investigation. I did notice that it identifies itself as "address@hidden", though.

I've tried different values for the following in different combinations, to no avail:

 * env.use_shell

 * env.use_ssh_config

 * env.forward_agent

 * env.linewise

 * fab --no-keys

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions?

Thanks in advance for your time and suggestions,

James