Usage

remotescript is designed to let you run Python scripts on a remote machine. It is a simple tool which only requires that Python3 and Bash be installed the machine yet you would like the scripts to be installed.

Once remotescript connects to the remote machine, it will copy the script and any dependencies (such as data files, other scripts, etc.) to the machine and then build a virtual environment for the Python dependencies.

Here is an example in action:

Create a Python script that you would like to run on a remote machine. For example, let’s create a script called info.py which reads some information from the system and prints it out:

import platform
from platform import system_alias

if __name__ == "__main__":
    print(platform.system())
    print(system_alias(platform.system(), platform.release(), platform.version()))
    print(platform.release())

Create a dependency file which lists what Python libraries are required for execution of that script. For this simple example, since platform is a built-in library, we do not need a dependency file. However, when a dependency file is not given, remotescript will attempt to build one for you by scanning the imports of the primary script. It is recommended that a file is provided to avoid any issues.

In this case our file would simply be an empty file called requirements.txt.
Create a configuration file for which machines we would like the script to run on. For example, let’s create a file called “config.cfg” with the information on 2 different machines:
```
[machine1]
host = 192.168.1.33
user = user1
password = password1

[machine2]
host = 192.168.1.34
user = user2
password = password2
port = 14958
```
In this example file, one of the machines has a port specified. If no port is specified, the default port of 22 will be used.

Run the script using remotescript:

$ python3 -m remotescript --script info.py --requirements requirements.txt --config config.cfg --output /output

The output is saved in the directory specified by the --output flag. The output directory will contain subdirectory for each machines name, which were given by the section names in the configuration file.

The directory will look something like the following:

output_dir/ — machine1/ —— output.json # contains high level information about script execution —— stdout # text file containing the stdout of the script execution —— stderr # text file containing the stderr of the script execution —— setup_stdout # text file containing the stdout of the setup process —— setup_stderr # text file containing the stderr of the setup process