Telnet and running commands on remote systems

[Mats Wichmann]

On 10 Jan 2002 17:13:26 GMT, Donn Cave <donn at u.washington.edu> wrote:

:Quoth claird at starbase.neosoft.com (Cameron Laird):
:| In article <mailman.1010656214.2862.python-list at python.org>,
:| Jason Orendorff <jason at jorendorff.com> wrote:
:|>> YMMV, but, as for me, I feel much safer in having no telnet
:|>> (nor any non-anonymous FTP) taking place, and relying on SSH
:|>> and friends for everything...
:|>
:|> Good answer - to which I might add, if the task involves several
:|> commands, write a script that does everything.  Use Python or
:|> bash, or whatever you like.  Put the script on the server,
:|> and then invoke it remotely from Python via ssh.
:|> 
:|> ## Jason Orendorff    http://www.jorendorff.com/
:|
:| Me, too.  Conventional references present telnet, FTP,
:| account creation headed toward rhosts, and such, and
:| they are badly misguided.  Although the advice Alex and
:| Mr. Orendorff is in the minority, it's valuable and 
:| important.
:
:Well, just to confuse the issue, telnet and FTP can be as secure
:as ssh.  

Hemm.  I was just asked a question like this one recently (okay, last
week) and my response was to ask whether telnet or the equivalent was
actually the right answer to the problem.  Just because a traditional
way to solve a software distribution problem has been to ftp over a
tarball, then telnet in and unpack it, change some permissions, etc.
doesn't mean that scripting that same sequence in Python is the
solution I'd be looking at.  There are tools for solving problems like
"make this chunk of the filesystem tree look like it does on the
master distribution host" that don't involve telnet or ftp, in case
that turns out to be the problem folks /really/ want to solve when
they ask this question.


Mats

Mats Wichmann