From time to time I suddenly have a need to connect to a device's console via its serial port. The problem is, I never remember what port settings (baud rate, data bits, stop bits, etc...) to use with each particular device, and documentation never seems to be lying around when it's really needed.
I wrote a Python script, which uses a simple brute-force method (i.e. iterates over all possible settings, sends some test input and displays the response for a human to decide if it makes sense ), but:
it takes a long time to complete
does not always work (perhaps port reset/timeout issues)
just does not seem like a proper way to do this :)
So the question is: does anyone know of a procedure to auto-detect what port settings the remote device is using?
Although part 1 is no direct answer to your question:
There are devices, which just have a autodetection (called Auto-bauding) method included, that means: Send a character using your current settings (9k6, 115k2, ..) to the device and chances are high that the device will answer with your (!) settings. I've seen this on HP switches.
Second approach: try to re-order the connection possibilities. E.g. chances are high that the other end uses 9k6 with no hardware handshake, but less that it uses 38k4 with software Xon/Xoff.
If you break down your tries into just a few, the "brute force" method will be much more efficient.
Related
I am building a port scanning program ((irrelevant to the question, just explaining the background)), and I know the IP of the host, but not what ports are open. Hence, the scan.
It is in the early stages of development, so the error handling is bad, but not bad enough to make why Python does this explainable.
It tries to connect to, say, 123.456.7.8, 1. Obviously it's a ridiculous port to be open, so it throws an error. The error is No Route to Host or the such, right? Wrong! It is instead Operation Timed Out!.
Okay, let's increase the timeout in case my calculations were incorrect.
.
..
...
....All that did was rinse and repeat!
About 20 minutes later, the timeout is at 20 seconds, and it still is timing out. Really? Why does python raise a timed out error though, instead of No route to host! or similar?
I need to distinguish between time outs and connection failures, because there is a difference between late and nowhere. This prevents me from doing so, creating an infinite loop of hurry up and wait.
Whatever shall I do? Wherever shall I go?
Python socket module is a thin wrapper around your platform's socket API. The issue is unrelated to Python.
It is not necessary that you get No Route to Host error. Moreover it is common that a firewall just drops received packets (for a filtered port) that may manifest as a timeout error in your code. See Drop vs. Reject (ignore the conclusion but read the explanation of what is happening).
To workaround, make multiple concurrent connections and set a fixed timeout or use raw-sockets and send the packets yourself (you could use scapy, to investigate the behavior).
I am using Scapy to capture Wi-Fi client request frames. I am only interested in the MAC and requested SSID address of the clients. I do something like the following.
sniff(iface="mon0", prn=Handler)
def Handler(pkt):
if pkt.hasLayer(Dot11):
if pkt.type == 0 and pkt.subtype == 4:
print pkt.addr2 + " " + pkt.info
My issue is that I am doing this on a embedded device with limited processing power. When I run my script, my processor utilization rises to nearly 100%. I assume this is because of the sheer volume of frames that Scapy is sniffing and passing to my Python code. I also assume that if I could employ the right filter in my sniff command, I could eliminate many of the frames that are not being used and thus reduce the processor load.
Is there a filter statement that could be used to do this?
With Scapy it is possible to sniff with an BPF Filter applied to the capture. This will filter out packets at a much lower level then your Handler function is doing, and should significantly improve performance.
There is a simple example in the Scapy documentation.
# Could also add a subtype to this.
sniff(iface="mon0", prn=Handler, filter="type mgt")
Filter pieced together from here specifically.
Unfortunately I can't test this right now, but this information should provide you with a stepping stone to your ultimate solution, or someone else to post exactly what you need. I believe you will also need to set the interface to monitor mode.
You may also find this question of interest - Accessing 802.11 Wireless Management Frames from Python.
Scapy is extremely slow due to the way it decodes the data. You may
Use a BPF-filter on the input to only get the frames you are looking for before handing them to scapy. See this module for example. The module uses libpcap to get the data from the air or from a file first and passes it through a dynamically updated BPF-filter to keep unwanted traffic out
Write your own parser for wifi in c (which is not too hard, given the limited amount of information you need, there are things like prismhead though)
Use tshark from wireshark as a subprocess and collect data from there
I highly recommend the third approach although wiresharek comes with a >120mb library that your embedded device might not be able to handle.
I have a long running python process running headless on a raspberrypi (controlling a garden) like so:
from time import sleep
def run_garden():
while 1:
/* do work */
sleep(60)
if __name__ == "__main__":
run_garden()
The 60 second sleep period is plenty of time for any changes happening in my garden (humidity, air temp, turn on pump, turn off fan etc), BUT what if i want to manually override these things?
Currently, in my /* do work */ loop, i first call out to another server where I keep config variables, and I can update those config variables via a web console, but it lacks any sort of real time feel, because it relies on the 60 second loop (e.g. you might update the web console, and then wait 45 seconds for the desired effect to take effect)
The raspberryPi running run_garden() is dedicated to the garden and it is basically the only thing taking up resources. So i know i have room to do something, I just dont know what.
Once the loop picks up the fact that a config var has been updated, the loop could then do exponential backoff to keep checking for interaction, rather than wait 60 seconds, but it just doesnt feel like that is a whole lot better.
Is there a better way to basically jump into this long running process?
Listen on a socket in your main loop. Use a timeout (e.g. of 60 seconds, the time until the next garden update should be performed) on your socket read calls so you get back to your normal functionality at least every minute when there are no commands coming in.
If you need garden-tending updates to happen no faster than every minute you need to check the time since the last update, since read calls will complete significantly faster when there are commands coming in.
Python's select module sounds like it might be helpful.
If you've ever used the unix analog (for example in socket programming maybe?), then it'll be familiar.
If not, here is the select section of a C sockets reference I often recommend. And here is what looks like a nice writeup of the module.
Warning: the first reference is specifically about C, not Python, but the concept of the select system call is the same, so the discussion might be helpful.
Basically, it allows you to tell it what events you're interested in (for example, socket data arrival, keyboard event), and it'll block either forever, or until a timeout you specify elapses.
If you're using sockets, then adding the socket and stdin to the list of events you're interested in is easy. If you're just looking for a way to "conditionally sleep" for 60 seconds unless/until a keypress is detected, this would work just as well.
EDIT:
Another way to solve this would be to have your raspberry-pi "register" with the server running the web console. This could involve a little bit extra work, but it would give you the realtime effect you're looking for.
Basically, the raspberry-pi "registers" itself, by alerting the server about itself, and the server stores the address of the device. If using TCP, you could keep a connection open (which might be important if you have firewalls to deal with). If using UDP you could bind the port on the device before registering, allowing the server to respond to the source address of the "announcement".
Once announced, when config. options change on the server, one of two things usually happen:
A) You send a tiny "ping" (in the general sense, not the ICMP host detection protocol) to the device alerting it that config options have changed. At this point the host would immediately request the full config. set, acquiring the update with it.
B) You send the updated config. option (or maybe the entire config. set) back to the device. This decreases the number of messages between the device and server, but would probably take more work as it seems like more a deviation from your current setup.
Why not use an event based loop instead of sleeping for a certain amount of time.
That way your loop will only run when a change is detected, and it will always run when a change is detected (which is the point of your question?).
You can do such a thing by using:
python event objects
Just wait for one or all of your event objects to be triggered and run the loop. You can also wait for X events to be done, etc, depending if you expect one variable to be updated a lot.
Or even a system like:
broadcasting events
I have to filter and modify network traffic using Linux kernel libnetfilter_queue (precisely the python binding) and dpkt, and i'm trying to implement delayed packet forward.
Normal filtering works really well, but if i try to delay packets with function like this
def setVerdict(pkt, nf_payload):
nf_payload.set_verdict_modified(nfqueue.NF_ACCEPT, str(pkt), len(pkt))
t = threading.Timer(10, setVerdict, [pkt, nf_payload])
t.start()
It crashs throwing no exception (surely is a low level crash). Can i implement delay using directly libnetfilter like this or I must copy pkt, drop it and send the copy using standard socket.socket.send()?
Thank you
Sorry for the late reply, but I needed to do something like this, although slightly more complicated. I used the C-version of the library and I copied packets to a buffer inside my program, and then issued a DROP verdict. After a timeout relating to your delay, I reinject the packet using a raw socket. This works fine, and seems quite efficient.
I think the reason for your crash was due to the fact that you didnt issue a verdict fast enough.
I can't answer your question, but why not use the "netem" traffic-queue module on the outgoing interface to delay the packet?
It is possible to configure tc queues to apply different policies to packets which are "marked" in some way; the normal way to mark such packets is with a netfilter module (e.g. iptables or nfqueue).
I would like to determine the number of available serial ports, including those provided by USB adapters, under both Linux and windows without having to adapt the program for specific platforms.
I seem to be chasing my tail at the moment and would appreciate another angle on this.
Using pyserial is easy enough on either platform for using the ports, but how do you find out how many ports are available?
Does the example not work for you:
http://pyserial.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/checkout/pyserial/trunk/pyserial/examples/scan.py
It is a bit brute force (it just tries to connect to every port and ones that throw an exception are ignored as not present).