Python - netifaces module on remote linux hosts

Question

Python with netifaces works great to gather ip,netmask information on localhost but I'm having great difficulties to gather same info from remote server. I guess netifaces doesn't like paramiko as well as subprocess or os.system on remote server.

def interface_details():

    for iface in netifaces.interfaces():

        if iface == 'lo':

            continue

        iface_details = netifaces.ifaddresses(iface)

        if iface_details.has_key(netifaces.AF_INET):

            ipv4 = iface_details[netifaces.AF_INET]

        return ipv4

And this is how it fails:

# Using Paramiko to execute cmd.
>>> host_ssh.exec_command(interface_details())

   File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/paramiko/client.py", line 441, in exec_command
  File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/paramiko/channel.py", line 60, in _check
  File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/paramiko/channel.py", line 231, in exec_command
  File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/paramiko/message.py", line 285, in add_string
  File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/paramiko/common.py", line 170, in asbytes
Exception: Unknown type

Thanks

Answer 1

exec_command executes a command, not a python function. You can execute ifconfig , for example, and then parse its output. Alternatively, you can use RPyC to execute actual Python code remotely. It requires running a special service on the server, so it's not as simple as SSH. But running Python code and interacting with the results directly could help.