I’m using Ansible to talk to several Cisco devices. Most work as expected, but some of our terminal servers have an introductory menu. When I ssh to these devices, I don’t immediately get a prompt. Instead, I have to select an item from the menu, then I get a CLI prompt.
For example, when I use ssh manually to access one of these devices, it looks like this:
Authorized Users Only
Main Menu
1 Exit from
2 Close “active” connection
3 Open CLI
4 Connect to an ethernet switch in closet 1
5 Connect to an ethernet switch in closet 2
6 Connect to a test-bed device
7 Connect to a dial-out modem
8 Connect to a host
3
#
When I use Ansible to ssh to these devices, Ansible times out, which isn’t a big surprise.
When using Ansible, how can I get past the menu?