telnetlib — Telnet client¶Source code: Lib/telnetlib.py
The telnetlib module provides a Telnet class that implements the
Telnet protocol. See RFC 854 for details about the protocol. In addition, it
provides symbolic constants for the protocol characters (see below), and for the
telnet options. The symbolic names of the telnet options follow the definitions
in arpa/telnet.h, with the leading TELOPT_ removed. For symbolic names
of options which are traditionally not included in arpa/telnet.h, see the
module source itself.
The symbolic constants for the telnet commands are: IAC, DONT, DO, WONT, WILL, SE (Subnegotiation End), NOP (No Operation), DM (Data Mark), BRK (Break), IP (Interrupt process), AO (Abort output), AYT (Are You There), EC (Erase Character), EL (Erase Line), GA (Go Ahead), SB (Subnegotiation Begin).
telnetlib.Telnet(host=None, port=0[, timeout])¶Telnet represents a connection to a Telnet server. The instance is
initially not connected by default; the open() method must be used to
establish a connection. Alternatively, the host name and optional port
number can be passed to the constructor too, in which case the connection to
the server will be established before the constructor returns. The optional
timeout parameter specifies a timeout in seconds for blocking operations
like the connection attempt (if not specified, the global default timeout
setting will be used).
Do not reopen an already connected instance.
This class has many read_*() methods. Note that some of them raise
EOFError when the end of the connection is read, because they can return
an empty string for other reasons. See the individual descriptions below.
A Telnet object is a context manager and can be used in a
with statement. When the with block ends, the
close() method is called:
>>> from telnetlib import Telnet
>>> with Telnet('localhost', 23) as tn:
... tn.interact()
...
Changed in version 3.6: Context manager support added
See also
Telnet instances have the following methods:
Telnet.read_until(expected, timeout=None)¶Read until a given byte string, expected, is encountered or until timeout seconds have passed.
When no match is found, return whatever is available instead, possibly empty
bytes. Raise EOFError if the connection is closed and no cooked data
is available.
Telnet.read_all()¶Read all data until EOF as bytes; block until connection closed.
Telnet.read_some()¶Read at least one byte of cooked data unless EOF is hit. Return b'' if
EOF is hit. Block if no data is immediately available.
Telnet.read_very_eager()¶Read everything that can be without blocking in I/O (eager).
Raise EOFError if connection closed and no cooked data available.
Return b'' if no cooked data available otherwise. Do not block unless in
the midst of an IAC sequence.
Telnet.read_eager()¶Read readily available data.
Raise EOFError if connection closed and no cooked data available.
Return b'' if no cooked data available otherwise. Do not block unless in
the midst of an IAC sequence.
Telnet.read_lazy()¶Process and return data already in the queues (lazy).
Raise EOFError if connection closed and no data available. Return
b'' if no cooked data available otherwise. Do not block unless in the
midst of an IAC sequence.
Telnet.read_very_lazy()¶Return any data available in the cooked queue (very lazy).
Raise EOFError if connection closed and no data available. Return
b'' if no cooked data available otherwise. This method never blocks.
Telnet.read_sb_data()¶Return the data collected between a SB/SE pair (suboption begin/end). The
callback should access these data when it was invoked with a SE command.
This method never blocks.
Telnet.open(host, port=0[, timeout])¶Connect to a host. The optional second argument is the port number, which defaults to the standard Telnet port (23). The optional timeout parameter specifies a timeout in seconds for blocking operations like the connection attempt (if not specified, the global default timeout setting will be used).
Do not try to reopen an already connected instance.
Telnet.msg(msg, *args)¶Print a debug message when the debug level is > 0. If extra arguments are
present, they are substituted in the message using the standard string
formatting operator.
Telnet.set_debuglevel(debuglevel)¶Set the debug level. The higher the value of debuglevel, the more debug
output you get (on sys.stdout).
Telnet.close()¶Close the connection.
Telnet.get_socket()¶Return the socket object used internally.
Telnet.fileno()¶Return the file descriptor of the socket object used internally.
Telnet.write(buffer)¶Write a byte string to the socket, doubling any IAC characters. This can
block if the connection is blocked. May raise OSError if the
connection is closed.
Changed in version 3.3: This method used to raise socket.error, which is now an alias
of OSError.
Telnet.interact()¶Interaction function, emulates a very dumb Telnet client.
Telnet.mt_interact()¶Multithreaded version of interact().
Telnet.expect(list, timeout=None)¶Read until one from a list of a regular expressions matches.
The first argument is a list of regular expressions, either compiled (regex objects) or uncompiled (byte strings). The optional second argument is a timeout, in seconds; the default is to block indefinitely.
Return a tuple of three items: the index in the list of the first regular expression that matches; the match object returned; and the bytes read up till and including the match.
If end of file is found and no bytes were read, raise EOFError.
Otherwise, when nothing matches, return (-1, None, data) where data is
the bytes received so far (may be empty bytes if a timeout happened).
If a regular expression ends with a greedy match (such as .*) or if more
than one expression can match the same input, the results are
non-deterministic, and may depend on the I/O timing.
Telnet.set_option_negotiation_callback(callback)¶Each time a telnet option is read on the input flow, this callback (if set) is called with the following parameters: callback(telnet socket, command (DO/DONT/WILL/WONT), option). No other action is done afterwards by telnetlib.
A simple example illustrating typical use:
import getpass
import telnetlib
HOST = "localhost"
user = input("Enter your remote account: ")
password = getpass.getpass()
tn = telnetlib.Telnet(HOST)
tn.read_until(b"login: ")
tn.write(user.encode('ascii') + b"\n")
if password:
tn.read_until(b"Password: ")
tn.write(password.encode('ascii') + b"\n")
tn.write(b"ls\n")
tn.write(b"exit\n")
print(tn.read_all().decode('ascii'))