Telnet Script

[jkaftan]

I am looking for a way to allow non-technical personnel to have limited access to 2950 switches. TACACS is too expensive for us. I would like to be able to script a couple of simple tasks for them to do e.g. change a description on a port, without giving them access to passwords.

Does anyone know a good Telnet Scripting tool that will allow me to do this?

 

[RookThis]

Not sure if this will work for you, but could you create local user accounts on the devices and set an appropriate priv. level? I've never done this, so it's just a suggestion:

 

[JAPeed]

Take a look at the 'expect' scripting langauge. It originated in the Unix world, but at least one Windows-compatible version is available from

http://www.activestate.com;

With 'expect', you can write scripts that automatically go out on the network, interact with remote systems, login, execute commands, and so forth. I think anything you can do by hand from a DOS or Unix console window, you can script it with 'expect'. The ActiveState version of 'expect', which can be downloaded as a 'temporary demo version', depends on another pkg called TCL (which is a free download). I played around with it on a Win 2000 box, and its pretty cool. But they dont give you much time to really learn it before the demo license expires. Then you have to buy it.
If you're environment is UNIX, then you could set up a limited access account for the operators to use, give them execute rights to the Expect program, and it would go out and perform the operations you want on the switch. Any good UNIX system-admin book can explain how to set up a limited functions account.
The active state website also has a very good Windows compatible version of Perl . Perl is a very flexible and capable scripting language well suited for working text files and text data. Their version is called ActivePerl.

Good luck..
Alan