Python Pexpect pxssh Getting the Exit Status

Question

I am using pexpect to run a series of commands to a remote machine and would like to get the exit status of each command. However, when I try to retrieve the exit status I am getting the incorrect value. Is there a way to get the correct exit status using pxssh from Pexpect? Here is the code I have tried along with the output. The command was successful but the exit status given was 255 instead of 0.

from pexpect import pxssh

try:
    s = pxssh.pxssh(timeout=30, maxread=2000000, options={
                    "StrictHostKeyChecking": "no",
                    "UserKnownHostsFile": "/dev/null"})
    hostname = 'my_hostname'
    username = 'username'
    password = 'my_pass'
    s.login (hostname, username, password, port=22, auto_prompt_reset=False)
    s.PROMPT = '*$'

    s.sendline('uptime')
    s.prompt()
    print(s.before.decode('utf-8'))
    s.close()
    print('s exitstatus=', s.exitstatus)

except pxssh.ExceptionPxssh as e:
    print("pxssh failed on login.")
    print(e)

Output:

 uptime
 09:10:39 up 10 days, 17:35,  4 users,  load average: 0.12, 0.18, 0.16

s exitstatus= 255

Answer 1

.exitstatus is the exit status of the ssh process. See following example to see how to get the exit status of a command run in the ssh session:

>>> ssh = pxssh.pxssh()
>>> ssh.login('127.0.0.1', 'root', 'passwd')
True
>>> ssh.sendline('ls not-found')
13
>>> ssh.prompt()
True
>>> ssh.before
'ls not-found\r\nls: cannot access not-found: No such file or directory\r\n'
>>> ssh.sendline('echo $?')
8
>>> ssh.prompt()
True
>>> ssh.before
'echo $?\r\n2\r\n'
>>> ssh.before.split('\r\n')[1]
'2'        <-- This is the ls command's exit status
>>>