I would like to check programmatically if I can telnet to a Unix box
without errors.

I know an extensive solution would require Expect for analyzing output
but
I am looking for something simple.

2006-08-18, 14:23(-07), SQ:
> I would like to check programmatically if I can telnet to a Unix box
> without errors.
>
> I know an extensive solution would require Expect for analyzing output
> but
> I am looking for something simple.

If you want to verify that you can login with your user and
passwd, then you'll need something like expect.

if
HOST=machine USER=me PASS=pass expect -c '
spawn telnet $env(HOST)
expect_after timeout {exit 1} eof {exit 1}
expect {
"ogin:" {
send "$env(USER)\r"
expect assword: {send "$env(PASS)\r"}
}
assword: {send "$env(PASS)\r"}
}
expect -re {[$#>] }' > /dev/null 2>&1
then
echo I could login to that machine
fi

Alternatively, you can do:

{
{
sleep 5
echo me
sleep 2
echo pass
sleep 10
} | telnet machine 2>&1
echo
} | grep -q '[$#>] '

But that would be less reliable

--
Stéphane