Shell Programming and Scripting

Hello everybody,

I have a requirement in my script..
When i'am executing a script, it'll ask a passwd of some service account.. I need to pass it to the script through a zipped file when it asks for it.
The script can be executed by more people many number times. So for securty purpose, it should not be hard coded, that's why i want pass the password through a file.. And we can not use expect, as the binaries are not existing in our unix boxes.

EX: $ command
Password: --> need to pass the passwd here

Can any experts please help on this requirement?

Please let me know if you have any doubts/queries on this...

Regards,
Raghu

Keeping a password in a file is usually avoided for security reasons... Keeping it in a zip merely adds one more step any passerby needs to do to see your passwords.

That said, password inputs are generally special. They don't read from stdin, really, they go straight to the TTY and refuse to use anything not a TTY. (This is by design: It's a security feature to prevent the use of stored passwords.) expect brute-forces the login by creating a convincing virtual terminal for it to talk to; without something like expect, you're stuck with account management.

Which could still be used reasonably securely, I think. Create a special account that can be logged into via SSH with a pre-shared key; nobody without this key will be able to login to this account. Then configure sudo to allow this account to run your script as a different user passwordlessly.