Shell Programming and Scripting

I have a script that generates a file which is my own incarnation of a date using the 'date' function (we'll call this script a). I would like that script to invoke my other script (script b) which contains my ftp info. Since I have yet to figure out a good way to use regular ftp (yes i can only use ftp on this box, i'll explain if needed) and not have my password be in plaintext in the file. Script a creates,

Code:

"date +%m%d%Y".tar.gz

with no problem. I need to ftp that file using script b. At the end of a i have

Code:

 ftp -n < scriptB

. Inside of script b i need it to ftp the gzipped tarball a made. One caveat, I use a variable $bkDir to create the tarball

Code:

bkDir="$frDir""date +%m%d%Y"

If I could get script b to recognize bkDir for my put command that'd be awesome. Thanks

This approach is not easy but not impossible. It is a perfectly acceptable technique to avoid placing the username and password on the command line and thereby making the password visible with "ps".

Understanding your posted script has proved difficult because it never executes the date command. What follows is best guess and untested.

We must assume that you understand ftp and that scriptB only contains ftp commands. You need to create a prototype version of scriptB - say scriptB.skel
Wherever you have a variable in a ftp command, place a unique string.
e.g.

Code:

cd BACKUPDIR
put FILENAME

Note that this is not $BACKUPDIR and $FILENAME. This is a textual command file to "ftp" and has nothing to do with Shell.

Then in the calling shell script edit scriptB.skel with "sed" to change the variables to the current values.

Code:

mydate="`date +%m%d%y`"
filename="${mydate}.tar.gz"
frDir="whatever"
bkDir="${frDir}${mydate}"

cat scriptB.skel | sed -e "s/FILENAME/${filename}/g" | sed -e "s/BACKUPDIR/${bkDir}/g" > scriptB

And finally having prepared the commands:

Code:

ftp -n < scriptB

sorry forgot my backticks on the date command, it executes the date command in my script. I just forgot them here. It was 4am my time and I was getting very sleepy.

I understand.

I'm going to try using arrays and obfuscated math to hide my plaintext password in my script, any thoughts or better ideas? I just want it hidden on my script. I plan on deploying it in the near future and want other users to be able to feel "safer" lol. I never use sed so a small explanation on the "s/BACKUPDIR/" parts would be nice.

ok I have one that does a ftp to different servers with different file(s).
so to start I have a driving map file with contents like:
xmlfile|server|uid|pass|remote dir|delete file before send|rename|sftp|send tofull name|zip it Y or N

Then the shell script doses some manipulations like:
[CODE]
serv_name=`echo $x |awk '{FS="|"}{print $
LUSER=`echo $x |awk '{FS="|"}{print $3}'`
pass_wd=`echo $x |awk '{FS="|"}{
for(i=1;i<=length($4);i++){
if(substr($4,i,1)=="%"){
lout=lout " "
}else{
lout=lout substr($4,i,1)
}
}
printf("%s\n",lout)}'`
[\CODE]
of course the passwords and some other areas have invalid characters like & and spaces and ! so I had to work thru those.

But the end result is I output the vars to a file(script) and then execute it and remove.
so
[CODE]
if [ "$is_sftp" = "yes" ]; then
echo "sftp $LUSER@$serv_name <<EOF" >> $ftp_fl
else
echo "ftp -n -v <<EOF" >> $ftp_fl
echo "open $serv_name" >> $ftp_fl
echo "quote USER $LUSER" >> $ftp_fl
echo "quote PASS ${pass_wd}">> $ftp_fl
fi
echo "bye" >> $ftp_fl
echo "EOF" >> $ftp_fl

ksh ./$ftp_fl >>$send_log 2>&1
[\CODE]

The file should contain all resolved parms as needed and then is cleaned up,

Other posters please note that the O/P has ftp not sftp.

First time you have mentioned passwords. Obviously if your ftp command file has permissions 600 this is pretty secure.

In the end there is only one answer to this. Use a ".netrc" file in the home directory of the user initiating the ftp. See "man .netrc". On most systems it will not work at all unless the permissions of the ".netrc" file are set to 600 .

Hope this helps.


Ps. The "sed" (Streams Editor) commands posted substitute "s" one string for another string. In this case we are changing a unique text string to the value of a Shell variable. The clever bit is deciding what to use for a unique string.