[Linux-users] any 'expect' gurus?

[Bruce Marshall]

On Wednesday 15 August 2007, Lonni J Friedman wrote:
> I'm trying to use expect for the first time to automate the
> installation of a '.run' package which lacks a silent or automated
> installation option.
>
> I used autoexpect to generate the expect script.  It works fine if I
> run it on a specific system, however trying to run it on any other
> system where the user running the script is not a known variable
> results in strange behavior.  The problem appears to be that
> autoexpect captured my shell prompt as part of its content, and since
> that prompt differs from one system (and distro) to another, it no
> longer gets the match its expecting.
>
> The odd thing is that the script still works, except it never exits
> cleanly at the end, and instead hangs until I manually kill it.
>
> The man page talks about an 'exit' directive, but that doesn't seem to
> work for me, when I append it to the end of the expect script.  There
> are also a few references to using wildcards, but I don't see how to
> define them.  Anyone been down this road before?

Been down it just a few weeks ago....  but never heard of autoexpect so I 
didn't use that.

Here's what I ended up with....  probably could be better but once I got it to 
work, I went on to other things.  

spawn /usr/bin/rsync -auvzr --delete -e  "ssh -p 22 -l <userid> "<usual rsync 
to and from stuff  > "
expect "password:"
  set timeout 20
   send "xxxxxxpq\r"
   set timeout -1
   expect eof

It was the  expect  eof    that did the trick for me.  Expect will wait until 
the command completes.