send_command not searching for default device prompt but something else

[mrwatts]

When we call send_command without an expected output, Netmiko should look for the default device prompt, but it sometimes doesn't.

Example code:

        pattern_files = r"Do you want to remove the above files\? \[y\/n\]"
        pattern_success = r"SUCCESS: install_remove"

        # Connect to the device
        with ConnectHandler(**device_connect_info) as net_connect:
            output = net_connect.send_command(
                "install remove inactive", f"({pattern_files}|{pattern_success})"
            )
            if pattern_success in output:
                msg = f"No unused installation files on {device.host_name} to remove."
                logger.debug(msg)
            else:
                output = net_connect.send_command("y")

                msg = f"Unused installation files have been removed from {device.host_name}."
                logger.debug(msg)

        logger.debug(f"Cleanup of installation files on {device.host_name} completed.")

This code causes an exception on the line:

output = net_connect.send_command("y")

The exception is:

netmiko.exceptions.ReadTimeout: 
Pattern not detected: '\\[y/n\\]' in output.

It is unclear to us why Netmiko is expecting a [y/n] prompt here and not the standard device prompt.

We're on Netmiko 4.5.0

[ktbyers]

This second send_command needs to use an expect_string:

                output = net_connect.send_command("y", expect_string=r"#")

I assumed #, but whatever the appropriate character(s) that can be matched using a reg-ex in the output.

Basically, the issue is Netmiko typically tries to automatically find the terminating prompt by sending an , but doing that here won't work (as the network device responds to the enter with [y/n]. The expect_string argument works around that by just hard-coding the pattern to look for.

[mrwatts]

Thanks, I'll try that