How to run the sftp command with a password from Bash script

Question

I need to transfer a log file to a remote host using sftp from a Linux host  I have been provided credentials for the same from my operations group  However  since I don t have control over other host  I cannot generate and share RSA keys with the other host    So is there a way to run the sftp command  with the username password provided  from inside the Bash script through a cron job   I found a similar Stack Overflow question  Specify password to sftp in a Bash script  but there was no satisfactory answer to my problem

User · Accepted Answer

You have a few options other than using public key authentication:

Use keychain
Use sshpass (less secured but probably that meets your requirement)
Use expect (least secured and more coding needed)

If you decide to give sshpass a chance here is a working script snippet to do so:

export SSHPASS=your-password-here
sshpass -e sftp -oBatchMode=no -b - sftp-user@remote-host << !
   cd incoming
   put your-log-file.log
   bye
!

User · Answer

Bash program to wait for sftp to ask for a password then send it along      bin bash expect -c   spawn sftp username your host expect   Password   send   your password here r   interact     You may need to install expect  change the wording of  Password  to lowercase  p  to match what your prompt receives  The problems here is that it exposes your password in plain text in the file as well as in the command history  Which nearly defeats the purpose of having a password in the first place

User · Answer

Another way would be to use lftp   lftp sftp   user password host  -e  put local-file name  bye    The disadvantage of this method is that other users on the computer can read the password from tools like ps and that the password can become part of your shell history    A more secure alternative which is available since LFTP 4 5 0 is setting the LFTP PASSWORDenvironment variable and executing lftp with --env-password  Here s a full example   LFTP PASSWORD  just an example  lftp --env-password sftp   user host  -e  put local-file name  bye    LFTP also includes a cool mirroring feature  can include delete after confirmed transfer --Remove-source-files    lftp -e  mirror -R  local log path   remote path   --env-password -u user sftp foo com

User · Answer

You can use lftp interactively in a shell script so the password not saved in  bash history or similar by doing the following   vi test script sh   Add the following to your file      bin sh HOST  lt yourhostname gt  USER  lt someusername gt  PASSWD  lt yourpasswd gt   cd  lt base directory for your put file gt   lftp lt  lt END SCRIPT open sftp    HOST user  USER  PASSWD put local-file name bye END SCRIPT   And write quit the vi editor after you edit the host  user  pass  and directory for your put file typing  wq  Then make your script executable chmod  x test script sh and execute it   test script sh

User · Answer

You can use sshpass for it  Below are the steps   Install sshpass     For Ubuntu - sudo apt-get install sshpass Add the Remote IP to your known-host file if it is first time For Ubuntu  -  ssh user IP -  enter  yes  give a combined command of scp and sshpass for it  Below is a sample code for war coping to remote tomcat sshpass -p   Password For remote machine  scp  home ubuntu latest build abc war  user  RemoteIP  var lib tomcat7 webapps

User · Answer

I was recently asked to switch over from ftp to sftp  in order to secure the file transmission between servers  We are using Tectia SSH package  which has an option --password to pass the password on the command line   example   sftp --password  password   userid   servername   Batch example         echo     ascii   cd pub   lcd dir name   put filename   close   quit           sftp --password  password   userid   servername    I thought I should share this information  since I was looking at various websites  before running the help command  sftp -h   and was i surprised to see the password option

User · Answer

EXPECT is a great program to use  On Ubuntu install it with  sudo apt-get install expect  On a CentOS Machine install it with  yum install expect  Lets say you want to make a connection to  a sftp server and then upload a local file from your local machine to the remote sftp server    usr bin expect  spawn sftp username hostname com expect  quot password  quot  send  quot yourpasswordhere n quot  expect  quot sftp gt  quot  send  quot cd logdirectory n quot  expect  quot sftp gt  quot  send  quot put  var log file log n quot  expect  quot sftp gt  quot  send  quot exit n quot  interact  This opens a sftp connection with your password to the server  Then it goes to the directory where you want to upload your file  in this case  quot logdirectory quot  This uploads a log file from the  local directory found at  var log  with the files name being file log to the  quot logdirectory quot  on the remote server

User · Answer

Combine sshpass with a locked-down credentials file and  in practice  it s as secure as anything - if you ve got root on the box to read the credentials file  all bets are off anyway

User · Answer

You can override by enabling Password less authentication  But you should install keys  pub  priv  before going for that    Execute the following commands at local server   Local   gt  ssh-keygen -t rsa    Press ENTER for all options prompted  No values need to be typed   Local   gt  cd  ssh Local   gt  scp  ssh id rsa pub user targetmachine  Prompts for pwd  gt   ENTERPASSWORD   Connect to remote server using the following command  Local   gt  ssh user targetmachine Prompts for pwd  gt  ENTERPASSWORD   Execute the following commands at remote server  Remote   gt  mkdir  ssh Remote   gt  chmod 700  ssh Remote   gt  cat id rsa pub  gt  gt   ssh authorized keys Remote   gt  chmod 600  ssh authorized keys Remote   gt  exit   Execute the following command at local server to test password-less authentication  It should be connected without password     gt  ssh user targetmachine

User · Answer

You can use a Python script with scp and os library to make a system call   ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048  local machine  ssh-copy-id user remote server address create a Python script like       import os     cmd    scp user remote server address remote file path local file path      os system cmd    create a rule in crontab to automate your script done

[bash] How to run the sftp command with a password from Bash script?

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