ActivePerl - perl.exe works, wperl.exe does not...

spstansbury has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Greetings Monks.

I'm hoping someone with more ActivePerl experience that I can shed some light on the behavior that I'm seeing.

I have a script ( below ) that copies some Nessus scans to another machine for further processing.

When I run the script via perl.exe ( >perl copy_files.wpl ) it runs perfectly.

When I run it via wperl.exe, either on the command line ( >wperl copy_files.wpl ) or via Windows Task Scheduler, it fails with the error: Unable to connect to remote host: Bad ssh command: Invalid argument at C:\Users\Administrator\RiskView\copy_files.wpl line 76.

I believe I have all the required tweaks for wperl - suppressing the window, redirecting STDERR and STDOUT to files, but as wperl.exe is supposed to be identical to perl.exe except for the need to launch a window, I'm at a loss to explain why it won't run the Net::SFTP::Foreign module without error.

As always, thanks for any input!

Best regards, Scott...

file_copy.wpl:


use strict;
use warnings;

use Date::Manip;
use Archive::Zip;
use Net::SFTP::Foreign;
use Data::Dumper;

BEGIN {
    Win32::SetChildShowWindow(0) if defined &Win32::SetChildShowWindow
+;
}

my $producer = "file_copy";

my $output_log = $producer . "_output_log.log";

my $error_log = $producer . "_error_log.log";

my $copy_log = $producer . "_log.log";

unlink( $error_log );

unlink( $output_log );
 
close(STDOUT);
open(STDOUT, ">>$output_log");

close(STDERR);
open(STDERR, ">>$error_log" );

# Nessus directory
my $nessus_dir = '/opt/sc4/orgs/1/VDB';

my $incoming_dir = 'C:\\Users\\Administrator\\Incoming';

# Data file directory
my $data_dir = 'C:\\Users\\Administrator\\Data';

my $host = '10.10.10.10';
my $user = 'user';
my $password = 'password';


# Check the copylog for the last set of files loaded

my $last_loaded_date;

open ( LOG_DATA, "<$copy_log");

while ( my $line = <LOG_DATA>) {
    chomp $line;
    next unless( $line =~ /Last Loaded/ );
    my @last_loaded_time_line = split( /:/, $line );
    $last_loaded_date =  $last_loaded_time_line[1];
    last;
}
close ( LOG_DATA);

print "Getting files more recent than $last_loaded_date\n";

my $dm1 = new Date::Manip::Date;
my $dm2 = $dm1->new_date;
my $now_date = $dm1->new_date;

my $time_stamp = time;
my $err = $now_date->parse( "epoch $time_stamp" );
my $current_date = $now_date->printf( "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S" );

$last_loaded_date =~ s/^\s+//;
$last_loaded_date =~ s/\s+$//;

$dm1->parse( $last_loaded_date ); 

my $sftp = Net::SFTP::Foreign->new( $host, user => $user, password => 
+$password, ssh_cmd => 'plink' );
$sftp->error and die "Unable to connect to remote host: " . $sftp->err
+or;

# Get the files
chdir $incoming_dir;

my @ls1 = @{ $sftp->ls( $nessus_dir, names_only => 1, ordered => 1 ) }
+;
my $last_loaded;

foreach my $dir_date ( @ls1 ) {
    next unless $dir_date =~ /\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}/;

    $dm2->parse( $dir_date );
    if ( $dm1->cmp( $dm2 ) == -1 ) {
        $sftp->mget( "$nessus_dir/$dir_date/*nessus-results.zip" ) or 
+die "Unable to transfer files: " . $sftp->error;
        $last_loaded = $dir_date;
        print "Getting files from directory $dir_date\n";
    }
}

undef $sftp;

open( LOG,">../$copy_log ") or die $!;

print LOG "Copied Nessus reports from SecurityCenter\n";
print LOG "Last copy run on: $current_date\n";
print LOG "Last Loaded (directory name): $last_loaded\n";

close( LOG );
[download]

Comment on ActivePerl - perl.exe works, wperl.exe does not... Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: ActivePerl - perl.exe works, wperl.exe does not... by chessgui (Scribe) on Jan 25, 2012 at 03:04 UTC
I've had a similar problem with wperl (I think it has nothing to do with ActiveState - it fails on Strawberry as well). In my particular case it was an Open2 call that hanged wperl. The workaround was to create a script which does nothing else but launches perl.exe without a window through create process with creation flag 'CREATE_NO_WINDOW'. You run this script via wperl.exe instead of your original prog. Mine is a Win32 solution: I don't know whether any similar thing works on Unix/Linux or not. The launching script: `se Win32::Process; Win32::Process::Create($perl,'c:\strawberry\perl\bin\perl.exe','perl.e +xe my_original_prog.pl',0,CREATE_NO_WINDOW,'.');` [download] The only modification to the original program itself that you include the following lines: `use Win32 qw(SW_HIDE); Win32::SetChildShowWindow(SW_HIDE);` [download] From here on no window is created (not even for child processes opened with Open2) and the main program is safe since it is run via perl.exe.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: ActivePerl - perl.exe works, wperl.exe does not... by spstansbury (Monk) on Jan 26, 2012 at 18:45 UTC
Thanks for the resonse! I'll give this a try. Scott...	[reply]
Re: ActivePerl - perl.exe works, wperl.exe does not... by Anonymous Monk on Jan 25, 2012 at 03:28 UTC
Add this at the top of your program `BEGIN { use Win32 qw(SW_HIDE); Win32::SetChildShowWindow(SW_HIDE); my $perl = $^X; if( $perl =~ s/wperl.exe/perl.exe/i ){ system(1, $perl, $0, @ARGV ); exit; } }` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: ActivePerl - perl.exe works, wperl.exe does not... by spstansbury (Monk) on Jan 26, 2012 at 18:52 UTC
This works... Given that I can run perl.exe with no child window, I can scrap wperl.exe... ;) Clearly there's some other difference between the two binaries - I have other wperl scripts that run fine, it was just theNet::SFTP::Foreign line: `my $sftp = Net::SFTP::Foreign->new( $host, user => $user, password => $password, ssh_cmd => 'plink' );` that wperl choked on that perl.exe handled without a problem... Thanks much for your help! Scott...	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: ActivePerl - perl.exe works, wperl.exe does not... by Anonymous Monk on Jan 27, 2012 at 09:36 UTC
The difference is STDIN/STDOUT/STDERR/ wperl.exe, being a windows GUI application, doesn't have these perl.exe, being a windows console (cmd.exe) application, does have these, but it also has a console window So you start wperl because it has no console window, make sure the children get hidden, then launch a hidden perl.exe , because it has a console and STDIN/STDOUT/STDERR Apparently Net::SFTP ... needs a STDIN/STDOUT/STDERR for pipes and such	[reply]
Re^4: ActivePerl - perl.exe works, wperl.exe does not... by Anonymous Monk on Jul 11, 2013 at 09:03 UTC


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