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I have a basic (server1) Django development web server and another server (server2) which has a python script that does some scientific calculations. Assume that the server1 has necessary authentication in place to run the script on server2. All I want to do is, click a button on the django website which would run the python script sitting on server2.

Ideas that I have so far are,

  • use some kind of SSH library to run the script and get response
  • have a REST API setup on server2 to run the script

Not sure if above ideas would work, please suggest your insight into this and if possible a simple example would be appreciated.

More info: Server1 and Server2 has to be 2 separate servers, server1 is a webserver, while server2 can be any linux virtual machine. Also, the response from server2 has to be sent back to server1.

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  • Do you absolutely need that server1 get the server2 script response? Commented Nov 18, 2014 at 23:53
  • @David W. Yes, getting back the response is essential in my case. Commented Nov 19, 2014 at 6:38
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    @DavidW. If I don't need a response in return: what's your suggestion/answer? Commented Jan 14, 2015 at 9:27

2 Answers 2

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After reading through and trying out various forum suggestions and spending solid time in Google, I've settled down with paramiko. It does exactly what I wanted and works like a charm for now.

On click of a button on my website, running on server1, I make a request to run a python script. The python script uses paramiko to make SSH connections to server2, runs the necessary command and writes a response to a plain/text file. This plain/text file is rendered back to the request through django form as a response.

This looks a little dirty now and there are more things to look into like, what happens if the command took very long time to execute or it erred out for some reason. I haven't spent time in figuring out answers for all those questions, but eventually will.

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There is no reason why server one cannot execute something like selenium or phantomjs on itself to navigate to your website on server2 and click a button on server 2 which then uses something like python's subprocess module to execute a program from server 2.

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Server2 is not a website, but a Virtual Machine which has several scientific data processing scripts. All that the server1 knows is the location of the script on server2 and the command to execute it.

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