How to run remote shell scripts from ASP pages?

Question

I need to create and ASP page (not .NET, yes I know its ancient), which should run remote shell scripts on a UNIX server and then capture the output into variables in VBScript within the page itself.

I have never done ASP or VBScipt before. I have tried to google this stuff, but all I find are references to remote server side scripting, nothing concrete.

I could really use 1. An elementary example of how this could be done. 2. Any other better alternatives to achieve this in a secure manner.

Thanks.

Answer 1

If the shell scripts are normally run on a telnet session then you could screen scrape and parse the responses. There are commercial COM components out there such as the Dart telnet library: http://www.dart.com/pttel.aspx that would let you do this.

Either that or you could roll your own using AspSock http://www.15seconds.com/component/pg000300.htm

Answer 2

Are there any freeware/open source alternatives to these libraries? Any examples?

Answer 3

@Pascal, sadly I'm not aware of any F/OSS alternatives. We usually just buy in these types of libraries provided that they're not hugely expensive, and more often than not the cost is built into the customer's overall project cost.

If you had .NET on the server, you could build a COM wrapped component to do the heavy lifting around System.Net.Sockets.TcpClient. Just a thought.