Thread: Handle Telnet Session Progmatically

Hi there,

I am trying to write a small application to handle a telnet session on a old cisco device, login, issue commands, write responses to log file. I've done this quite easily in perl, but intend to expand the program quite a bit and am much more comfortable with java so am trying to port it. I don't want to use third party libraries(jscape, apache, etc...)

However, I am not getting the response Im expecting from the server, where I should be getting a login prompt I'm getting:

��
������

and if I change readLine to read

65533

The basic method is:

		Socket socket = new Socket("My_Devices_IP", 23);
		socket.setKeepAlive(true);
 
		BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(socket.getInputStream()));
		BufferedWriter out = new BufferedWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(socket.getOutputStream()));
 
		out.write("admin\r\n");
		System.out.println(in.readLine());		
 
		socket.close();

I must be missing something! Any suggestions welcome.

That looks about right. When you use telnet on your old equipment, does it ask you for a username? My router doesn't. You might be seeing some telnet control bytes, followed directly by a password prompt. I suspect unless your application is very complicated you might be able to "wing it" with plain text. On the other hand, the first time you have to tackle a problem with control characters you're going to have to start re-writing one of the popular java telnet libraries.

When I telnet to the switch it responds with the hostname and a login prompt... I must be missing something.

it responds with the hostname and a login prompt

I suppose there was no great reason why it had to respond the same as my cheap router at home! Have you tried extending your code to send a username *and* the password? If you read the inputstream between writes, you may see less garbled output after the first exchange. If I attempt this with my router using the 'netcat' utility, the first response from the router is garbled (Telnet control bytes? The same integer value 65533 that you reported) and the rest is readable. Depending on how big the input buffer is on your old equipment you may need to delay sending the password until the username is handled, or even implement some handshaking based on reading expected responses. For something as well known as telnet, I think it would be easier to use one of the popular open source solutions. StackOverflow has a relevant page here:

Looking for Java Telnet emulator - Stack Overflow

Thanks for the suggestions, I still haven't worked it out yet but I think I am getting closer.