SSH and remote commands during automation.

Sometimes, you have to check a system's log or run some commands during automation or load test.

For example, recently I had to perform some end-to-end tests against enterprise outdoor modems. The test case requires to perform 100 "provisioning" against each modem per hour, having 50 modems at a time. Here is a brief about what "provisioning" means:

1- Script picks one modem from data source and apply a mutex (do-not-use flag).

2- Get corresponding parameters that should be used in web service requests from data source.

3- Generate additional needed parameters (Random IDs, Names created from timestamp , etc)

4-Send some requests in ordered manner (add to ESB DB, create a traffic service, activate)

5- Listen to JMS for the response,

6- Reboot the device

7- wait for the device to get back online

8- check device status, resources and logs.

9-continue to activate more services (repeat steps 1 to 8) for x more times.

The lines I marked as red are not the hardest parts, but are the ones I'm going to write about. 

I'm going to use Putty as the extension tool because:

• I can run multiple Putty instances in multi-thread load tests,
• We can easily save logs through Putty output.

Step 1: Create sessions for each remote device. Here is what I suggest in Putty config:

1. Name the session to IP or NS to limit your data-driven setup efforts.
2. "Close window on exit" : Always
   
3. Logging: Printable output with a unique file name, Always append to the end.
   
4. Connection keepalive check interval: ~5 (that depends, but is necessary to make the window closed when inactive)
   
5. Define Data -> Auto-Login username
   
6. if you are going to send only one line of command, put it in SSH -> Remote Command; otherwise, you can put all commands in a text file and call it externally as I explain below.
   

Step 2: create command files:

Since we have two group of commands (Reboot and Monitor), then I will use external files:

• Reboot: It is usually needed to send the "reboot" command with /sbin/ prefix if  you are sending it over SSH remotely. Therefore, my reboot.txt file only contains one line (/sbin/reboot)
• Monitoring: I want to constantly tail logs, and monitor CPU and RAM usage at the same time. So I have to run one of them in the background. something like: 

                      tail -f /var/log/messages & top -ibd2

Step 3: Call putty (and ping) as OS processes:

The way to conduct this step depends the tool or language you are using, but the concept is the same. You simply need to execute a command using OS command shell. for example in Java you'll need to run it like this:

exec(String command, String[] envp, File dir)

Remember, "String command" is a little tricky in windows: you usually need to add "cmd /c" before the main command string.

What you are going to call putty is: 

c:/puttyFolder/putty.exe -load "session_name" -pw password -m c:/textFiles/Reboot.txt

And if you are going to use it in a tool like JMeter: