batch commands fail on TMSH shell

My goal is to run batch scripts from a central automation server, as we do to track other device/server types. But I'm hitting a problem with the F5 TMSH shell.

 

 

My F5 admins setup a user account on one of our F5 BigIP version 10.1 devices, and configured it with tmsh terminal access. So when I login, it goes into TMSH.

 

 

All the commands work fine when issued interactively. But I see errors with putting the same commands in a batch script, for non-interactive access. Any lengthy command result yeilds two conditions that are not shown when you issue it interactively:

 

1) Only ~23 lines of output are displayed

 

2) The following two lines are at the top of the output:

 

 

WARNING: terminal is not fully functional

 

/var/tmp/tmsh/N3huSk/data (press RETURN)

 

 

 

So, for example, issuing a 'show /sys hardware field-fmt' command over a batch SSH connection, returns the following data (many more lines are shown when running the command interactively):

 

==============================

 

WARNING: terminal is not fully functional

 

/var/tmp/tmsh/N3huSk/data (press RETURN)

 

sys hardware chassis-fan-status-index 1 {

 

fan-speed 10887

 

index 1 status up

 

}

 

sys hardware chassis-fan-status-index 2 {

 

fan-speed 11637

 

index 2

 

status up

 

}

 

sys hardware chassis-fan-status-index 3 {

 

fan-speed 11250

 

index 3

 

status up

 

}

 

sys hardware chassis-info {

 

max-mac-count 2

 

reg-key -

 

}

 

==============================

 

 

Before running any commands, I disable 'pager' settings... so that all the lines of output are returned to standard out instead of paging through less/more output (command: "modify /cli preference pager disabled"). If I don't do this, then interactively I have to press a key to continue the output. Unfortunately, this doesn't fix the problem.

 

 

I am connecting on SSH (via Mindterm) with xterm configured as the terminal type. Keep in mind, this works fine when done interactively. With F5 using Linux on the backend, I figure this error might be suggesting that it doesn't know the terminal type. Unfortunately, I cannot get to bash from here to troubleshoot what's needed for TMSH batch access... e.g. look at configurations with files in the filesystem, run terminfo, set any environment variables from within TMSH, etc.

 

 

If someone could explain how to fix this issue, I certainly would appreciate it. Right now, batch commands are not working for this reason.

 

 

-Chris