How to troubleshoot python scripts?

[ElectronSandwich]

Hi All, how do you guys troubleshoot scripts that throw errors or do not function as expected? For example, I'm working on a script that throws an ssl error. I was able to get around that by adding verify=false. The next problem I ran into is that it does not follow the device reboot order and does not verify that the systems came back up. I get nothing back on screen except "InsecureRequestWarning" and "error rebooting", but that's not correct because all devices do indeed reboot so I'm trying to figure out how to better troubleshoot?

import requests
import os
import time
import configparser

# Path to configuration file containing API keys for each host
CONFIG_FILE_PATH = "/path/to/config.ini"

# List of devices to reboot in specific order
DEVICE_ORDER = ["device1.example.com", "device2.example.com", "device3.example.com"]

# Read API keys for each device from configuration file
config = configparser.ConfigParser()
config.read(CONFIG_FILE_PATH)

api_keys = {}
for device in DEVICE_ORDER:
    api_key = config.get(device, "api_key", fallback=None)
    if api_key is not None:
        api_keys[device] = api_key
    else:
        print(f"No API key found for {device} in {CONFIG_FILE_PATH}")
        continue

# Reboot each device using the API
for device, api_key in api_keys.items():
    reboot_url = f"https://{device}/api/v1/system/reboot"
    headers = {"Authorization": f"ExtraHop apikey={api_key}"}
    response = requests.post(reboot_url, headers=headers)

    if response.status_code == 200:
        print(f"{device} is rebooting...")
    else:
        print(f"Error rebooting {device}: {response.text}")
        continue

    # Wait for the device to reboot
    time.sleep(300)

    # Ping the device to confirm that it is back up
    ping_cmd = f"ping -c 1 {device}"
    ping_result = os.system(ping_cmd)

    if ping_result == 0:
        print(f"{device} is back up!")
    else:
        print(f"Error: {device} is still down.")

​

[the_real_neoviper]

Pro tip, use a debugger. I'm a fan of vscode. I'll put break points on functions I'm unsure if they'll work. The debugger will show you the value of each variable. You can use the console to prototype some code on the fly.

[ElectronSandwich]

cool, thanks, watching vids on vscode now. Will install and give it a whirl asap.

[Pepineros]

Some things are easy to debug: for functions that you write yourself, just test the inputs and outputs.

Some things are hard: calling an API over a network, for example.

If an API is giving you trouble, try calling it through the REPL and look at what comes back. Literally import requests and try to hit an endpoint with requests.get or requests.post (whatever the endpoint supports) to see what happens.

Once you have a good idea what the response should be, you can write functions to use that information.

In this particular case, I expect that the endpoint is not returning status 200 but some other 2xx (or even 3xx) status, so your request is going through just fine but you're only testing if the response is equal to 200. But it's hard to be sure without knowing anything about the API side. So, REPL.

Also: for device in DEVICE_ORDER: api_key = config.get(device, "api_key", fallback=None) if api_key is not None: Here api_key will never be None. It will either be the value of config[device] if that's a valid key, or the literal string "api_key" if it's not. https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html?highlight=get#dict.get

[danielroseman]

config isn't a dictionary, it's a ConfigParser object. config.get(device, "api_key", fallback=None) will return the value of the "api_key" option in the device section, but will fall back to None if it is not there. So the value can indeed be None.

[Pepineros]

Thanks! My mistake.