Python - getting values from 'interactive' (top, iftop, ntop etc) command line scenarios?

Question

Have been needing to write some code that recognises (and captures) when there's incoming/outgoing smb transfers on my server. I think the best way is to use popen with 'iftop'.

I was thinking I could just use popen to capture the data, but thing is iftop doesn't simply output the data - its an interactive environment that runs continuously until the user exits. So how can I parse values from these kind of programs into python?

Alternatively - a better option that popen(iftop) ?

Example:

foo.Popen("iftop" + someArguments)
//this is not stdout, so I can't pull string values (etc) from it :(
//how does?

what do you mean by `foo.Popen`? Isn't `Popen` a class in `subprocess`? — laike9m, Feb 09 '14 at 05:44
Likely this a duplicate for http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12419198/python-subprocess-readlines-hangs — user3159253, Feb 09 '14 at 07:11

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited Sep 03 '16 at 00:47

0

import subprocess, time
s = subprocess.Popen("iftop -s -t 1",shell=True,stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
while not s.poll() == 0:
    time.sleep(1)
print(s.stdout.read())

edited Sep 03 '16 at 00:47

Martin Tournoij

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answered Sep 02 '16 at 07:24

MingZuo Lin

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This should be `iftop -s 1 -t` (the -s flag requires the parameter to come immediately after it). When there is no number following `-s`, iftop shows "unknown option -s". – Zane Claes Apr 03 '20 at 15:16

Python - getting values from 'interactive' (top, iftop, ntop etc) command line scenarios?

1 Answers1