Running a CLI command from Python using paramiko

[johnstoni]

I have a very simple python script that uses ssh=paramiko.SSHClient(), ssh.connect (host, 22, user, password), stdin, stdout, stderr=ssh.exec_command(command), and for line in stdout.read().splitlines(): print(line). 

When I set host, user, password and command, e.g. "show ip int brief", to connect to a Cisco router, everything works fine and the script prints out the results that I expect. However, when I set them to connect to a PAN firewall, e.g. command="show clock", my script connects to the FW, which I confirm by looking in the FW's system log, but all I get returned is the 'Number of failed attempts since last successful login: 0' message?

Any ideas - I'm sure I'm just missing something basic. Do I need to import any of the PAN packages or can I just run run simple CLI commands using paramiko?

PS: I sleep for 20 seconds after connecting before running the ssh.exec_command()

Thanks,

Ian

[johnstoni]

Solved by:

import pandevice
my_fw = firewall.Firewall(host, user, password)
response = my_fw.op(command2, xml=True)
print(response)

The response is a page of XML, so needs to be interpreted, but I do get the answers I want 🙂