topic SmartTask output contains non-printable characters in API / CLI Discussion

SmartTask output contains non-printable characters

Duane_Toler — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 21:53:25 GMT

Sooo... I guess this is normal?

Test script is just a simplistic one to get started:

#!/bin/bash cat $1 >/tmp/pre_publish_dump.txt printf '{ "result" : "success"}' exit 0

With or without a "\n" at the end of the printf, and when using "echo" instead, the output in SmartConsole is the same after a Publish operation. Seems kinda weird.

I looked through $MDS_FWDIR/log/cpm.elg as well, and it says the same (no surprise):

14/03/25 21:47:36,705 INFO internal.executors.RunScriptActionExecutor [taskExecutor-316]: Script execution finished, exit code: 0, output: { "result" : "success"}, commandError 14/03/25 21:47:36,705 ERROR coresvc.internal.JobsSvcImpl [taskExecutor-316]: SmartTask execution output contains non-printable characters. Output as bytes: [10, 123, 32, 34, 114, 101, 115, 117, 108, 116, 34, 32, 58, 32, 34, 115, 117, 99, 99, 101, 115, 115, 34, 125] 14/03/25 21:47:36,705 INFO coresvc.internal.JobsSvcImpl [taskExecutor-316]: Action execution of SmartTask [7707d084-ebb9-4596-a421-2b0b41cf7441] succeeded

Just wanna make sure it's not just me going insane... (well, any more than I already am!).

Re: SmartTask output contains non-printable characters

Duane_Toler — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 22:34:39 GMT

Huzzah! I found a bug. 🙂 Still doesn't address the original oddity above, tho.

I'll get this to TAC, but in case anyone else tries this:

If you load a Bash script containing a line that checks to match a regular expression, the script import strips out the '~' part:

#!/bin/bash bad_rule_re="[^[:alnum:] _\.-]" while read rule_name; do if [[ $rule_name =~ ${bad_rule_re} ]]; then printf '{ "result" : "failure", "message" : "%s" }\n' "Rule '${rule_name}' must not contain special characters (comma, slash, etc.)." exit 0 fi done <<<$(cat /tmp/pre_publish.txt |jq -r '.operations."modified-objects"[] |select(."new-object".type == "access-rule")."new-object" |.name ')

The "=~" operator on Line 6 gets stripped to just "=". Oops.

R81.20, MDS, Jumbo HFA 84 (yes, i know, needs to be updated). JHF release notes didn't have anything for SmartTasks past JHF 79 anyway.

Re: SmartTask output contains non-printable characters

Duane_Toler — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 22:53:46 GMT

An alternative workaround, however, that does work:

#!/bin/bash bad_rule_re="[^[:alnum:] _\.-]" while read rule_name; do if echo "${rule_name}" | grep -E -q "${bad_rule_re}" ; then printf '{ "result" : "failure", "message" : "%s" }\n' "Rule '${rule_name}' must not contain special characters (comma, slash, etc.)." exit 0 fi done <<<$(cat /tmp/pre_publish.txt |jq -r '.operations."modified-objects"[] |select(."new-object".type == "access-rule")."new-object" |.name ') printf '{ "result" : "success"}\n' exit 0

The reason for this check is so that when someone adds/edits a rule in SmartConsole, I don't have to account for special characters in an Ansible playbook later with YAML and the quoting "gotchas".

I'll put this in the CheckMates Toolbox as well.