empty(1)empty(1)NAMEempty - run processes under pseudo-terminal sessions
SYNOPSISempty-f [-i fifo1 -o fifo2] [-p file.pid] [-L file.log] command [com‐
mand args]
empty-w [-Sv] [-t n] [-i fifo2 -o fifo1] key1 [answer1] ... [keyX
answerX]
empty-s [-Sc] -o fifo1 [request]
empty-r [-b size] [-t n] [-i fifo2]
empty-l
empty-k [pid] [signal]
empty-h
DESCRIPTIONempty is an utility that provides a simple interface to execute and/or
interact with processes under pseudo-terminal sessions. This tool is
definitely useful in programming of shell scripts which are used to
communicate with interactive programs like telnet or ftp. In some cases
empty can be a substitution for TCL/expect or other similar programming
tools.
There are several common forms of command lines for empty. But the
first execution of empty is usually a start in the daemon mode to fork
a new command (process) under PTY-session. This can be done with -f
key. An interface for the input and output data channels of the forked
process is performed by two fifo files which names may be specified
with -i and -o keys. These files are automatically created/deleted any
time you start/exit empty daemon, so you must not create them manually.
If you did not specify these fifo files in the command line, empty
names them by itself basing on its PID and PID of forked PTY process.
At this point any application can easily communicate with forked
process by writing data to the input fifo and reading answers from the
output fifo, see EXAMPLES section for the details. To simplify this
operations, empty offers an interfase to just send any data (use -s
key), or even to watch the output fifo for multiple keyphrases and
reply to the input fifo with one of the responses (see -w key).
Note! Input fifo for empty-f ... is usually an output fifo for empty-w and empty-s forms. And output fifo of empty-f ... is an input
fifo for empty-w ...
If something goes wrong the forked process may be killed by the stan‐
dard kill command, or using -k key of empty. See -p option to save PID
of empty daemon process.
The following options are available:
-f fork, spawn, start or execute a new process specified by
the command and its arguments. If you omit fifo files,
empty with its job control algorithm will create them under
/tmp directory using this templates: empty.PPID.PID.in and
empty.PPID.PID.out, here PPID is usually your shell system
process ID and PID is system process ID of empty-daemon.
-s send data (request) to the forked process. If fifo file was
not specitied with -o key, empty will try to find an auto‐
matically created fifo file it in /tmp directory. Instead
of command line you can send your request or data directly
to standard input (stdin) of empty-w watch for one or more keyphrases and if specified send the
appropriated response to the input fifo. If response is
not set, empty waits for the proper keyphrase then exits.
With -w key empty returns the number of matched keyphrase-
response pair, or 255 if fails to find this match (see -t
key for details of possible exit on timeout).
-r read from output FIFO one line (default) or one block of
data (if -b size was specified). If -t n key was placed,
exit on timeout.
-l list automatically created jobs by your shell. NB! Your
custom jobs, which fifo files you specified with -i and -o
keys, are not displayed. So if you did not specify fifo
files with -i and -o keys all operations are done under the
job marked current
-k send signal to the process with pid. If you did not spec‐
ify pid, empty tries to find it within the list of automat‐
ically created jobs. If signal is omitted the default
SIGTERM is used.
-h print short help message and exit
-i fifo1 a fifo file, which is used as input for a forked process.
-o fifo2 a fifo file, which is used as output for a forked process.
-L file.log This option allows to log the whole empty session to a
file. Marks >>> and <<< show the directions of data flow.
-p file.pid Save PID of empty daemon process to a file
-t n If input FIFO is empty, wait for n seconds (default is 10)
to receive the keyphrase then exit on timeout with 255
code.
-c force empty to use stdin for data or requests.
-S Strip the last character from the input. Works with -s and
-w keys
-v kvazi verbose mode. Show all contents of received buffer.
EXAMPLES
Start a new PTY-session with telnet to localhost:
empty-f -i in.fifo -o out.fifo -p empty.pid -L empty.log telnet localhost
Interact with telnet:
empty-w -i out.fifo -o in.fifo ogin 'my_user\n'
empty-w -i out.fifo -o in.fifo assword 'my_password\n'
Send commands to telnet with empty:
empty-s -o in.fifo who
empty-s -o in.fifo "ls -la /\n"
The same using STDIN:
echo who | empty-s -o in.fifo
echo "ls -la /" | empty-s -o in.fifo
Just cat output from telnet:
cat out.fifo
Read one line from out.fifo:
empty-r -i out.fifo
Send commands to telnet with ordinary echo:
echo "who am i" > in.fifo
echo "uname -a" > in.fifo
Kill a process with PID 1234:
empty-k 1234
or
kill 1234
Telnet session with automatically created jobs:
empty-f telnet localhost
Interact with telnet using job control:
empty-w ogin 'my_user\n'
empty-w assword 'my_password\n'
List automatically created jobs:
empty-l
PPID PID TYPE FILENAME
479 706 in /tmp/empty.479.706.in
479 706 out /tmp/empty.479.706.out
479 711 in /tmp/empty.479.711.in
479 711 out /tmp/empty.479.711.out
479 711 current
SECURITY
It is considered insecure to send a password in the command line like
this:
empty-w assword 'my_password\n'
or like this:
empty-s 'my_password\n'
The reason is that the command line arguments are visible to the system
while empty is running. Any local user can see them with ps(1), some‐
times they are visible even remotely with finger(1). Also your server
may have some monitoring tools which may store the output from ps(1) in
their logs. There are also other, more complicated ways to compromise
this information. Generally, you should take command line arguments as
(possibly) visible to every one unless you really know what you're
doing.
empty with '-s' flag runs quickly in most cases, but still it can hang
for a number of reasons (like fifo overloading), and even if it runs
quick you still cannot be sure that no one will see its command line
arguments even in this short time. empty with '-w' flag is even worse
because it must wait for the keyphrase.
A better way to send the password to the supervised program is to read
it from file:
empty-s [common options] <./password-file
or from a pipe:
get-password-of-user "$user" |empty -s [common options]
You should still make sure that you do not send any password via com‐
mand line while creating this file, and certainly you should set some
safe permissions to this file AND its directory (with the parent direc‐
tories) before reading the password from the file OR writing the pass‐
word to it.
Another possible way is to use your shell's builtin (but see below):
echo "$password" |empty -s [common options]
Many shells like bash(1), csh(1) and FreeBSD's sh(1) do not call exter‐
nal echo(1) command but use their own builtin echo command. Since no
external command is started (the shell itself does all that echo(1)
must do), nothing is shown in the process list. It is beyond this man‐
ual page to discuss the way to make sure that your shell uses the
builtin command.
RETURN VALUES
If any error occurs empty usually exits with code 255. Otherwise zero
or some positive value (see -w key) is returned.
SEE ALSOexpect(1), chat(8)AUTHORempty was made by Mikhail E. Zakharov. This software was based on the
basic idea of pty version 4.0 Copyright (c) 1992, Daniel J. Bernstein
but no code was ported from pty4. SECURITY section of this manual page
was contributed by Sergey Redin.
March, 05 2006 empty(1)
