Shell Programming and Scripting

Hello,

I've read quite a few of the sftp questions and answers on the forum but I believe my situation is slightly different.

I need to automate an sftp transfer to a host that requires not only a ssh publickey, but also a password.

When I try using sftp in batch mode, supplying a "user '<uname>' '<pwd>'" config simply does not work.

sftp -b - user@host <<!
<commands>
!

During verbose output I see the remote host responds:

I've tried various things in the batch commands to no avail

Cheers,
n

You should really go for exchanging keys for passwordless authentication, if this is an option in your environment. That would be the usual way how to do it.

Here are 2 more threads with discussion about this topic:
https://www.unix.com/shell-programmin...-scp-help.html
https://www.unix.com/unix-advanced-ex...assphrase.html

Another option is to use tcl/expect to script the operation.

It, as well as scp, sudo, su, and other sane authentication systems, are designed to do this. Password authentication means 'password typed by a human authentication' and they only accept a password from anything else under great duress. This is a security feature, because stored plaintext passwords are almost impossible to keep safe.

You might try ssh-agent, which would allow you to type the password in but once and remember the key for later.

Thanks people.

I'm trying to get the recipient to drop the password requirement as this looks to be the optimum approach. We're encrypting the actual bits as well as the tunnel so I think we should be good. Failing that an expect script might be the way forward. ssh-agent is not an option in my particular situation.

Didn't know about expect or ssh-agent before today so many, many thanks for your replies