When people say "works in shell, not in cron", 90% of the time it's the PATH, because cron's default path is way more minimal than the shell's default path. As I suggested before, either set a better PATH, or call programs by their absolute paths.
On my system sftp's absolute path is /usr/bin/sftp, I can't speak for yours; and /usr/ things almost surely aren't in cron's default PATH. Things like mailx and date might also need absolute paths. cat hopefully shouldn't on a sane system.
You might also try editing your cron line like
so that when things go wrong, it dumps the error messages for you into these logfiles instead of hyperspace.
I had a similar problem, and I have resolved with this script:
#!/usr/local/bin/expect -f #<---insert here your expect program location
# procedure to attempt connecting; result 0 if OK, 1 elsewhere
proc connect {passw} {
expect {
-re ".*Are.*.*yes.*no.*" {
send "yes\r"
exp_continue
}
-re ".*PASSWORD.*" {
send "$passw\r"
expect {
"sftp*" {
return 0
}
}
}
-re ".*password.*" {
send "$passw\r"
expect {
"sftp*" {
return 0
}
}
}
-re ".*Password.*" {
send "$passw\r"
expect {
"sftp*" {
return 0
}
}
}
}
# timed out
return 1
}
# read the input parameters
set user [lindex $argv 0]
set passw [lindex $argv 1]
set host [lindex $argv 2]
set remotepath [lindex $argv 3]
set localpath [lindex $argv 4]
set file1 [lindex $argv 5]
set file2 [lindex $argv 6]
# check if all were provided
if { $user == "" || $passw == "" || $host == "" || $remotepath == "" || $localpath == "" || $file1 == "" } {
puts "Usage: <user> <passw> <host> <remote path> <local path> <file to send> [<file to send>]\n"
exit 1
}
# sftp to specified host and send the files
spawn /usr/local/bin/sftp $user@$host
set rez [connect $passw]
if { $rez == 0 } {
send "lcd $localpath\r"
send "cd $remotepath\r"
set timeout -1
send "put $file1\r"
if { $file2 != "" } {
send "put $file2\r"
}
send "quit\r"
expect eof
exit 0
}
puts "\nError connecting to server: $host, user: $user and password: $passw!\n"
exit 2
it copies this code in file SFTP.exp and then call from your shell in this way:
SFTPLOG=`${EXEPATH}SFTP_FOR_C1.exp ${USER} ${PASS} ${HOST} ${RPATH} ${LPATH} '*'`
and verify ${SFTPNUM} with number of records in retrieved file:
SFTPNUM=`echo "${SFTPLOG}" | grep "100%" | wc -l | awk '{print $1}'`
if [ ${SFTPNUM} -ne ${DFILE} ]
then
echo "WARNING: number of records......."
exit 1
fi
Your problem wasn't similar at all, and your "solution" is completely unrelated. Whether you use expect or not it still would not have been in the PATH.
Furthermore: sftp is designed to not let you use plaintext passwords. So does any sane authentication system, such as su and sudo. It's a security feature to prevent the plaintext password being stored and transmitted with insecure methods, and to slow down brute-forcing. That you had to bludgeon sftp into doing what you wanted with the external "expect" language is a subtle hint -- in mile-high, flashing neon letters -- that you're not supposed to do that.
There's much better, passwordless, secure, reliable authentication methods that don't require an external tool hack, and you'll find them in 30 seconds if you google "passwordless ssh". The poster of this thread is in fact using them already.
hi Team,
I am connecting from one (A) linux server to another(C)/any linux server by sftp
on A linux server:
sftp userid@C
password:
mget is Not working fine
I am using mget to pull the files. it shows mget as invalid command.
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I am new to linux scripting and I was look for a way to auto login to a server using sftp to download a file.
I found one and it is working fine. But i don't know the meaning of <<EOF in the code. Any one explain it to me:
#!/bin/sh
HOST=yourservername
USER=yourusername ... (1 Reply)
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The script is as follow:
#!/bin/sh
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do
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mv tmp.tmp $file
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Hi Newbie here
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Hi,
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Hi,
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#!/bin/ksh
echo "OK, starting now..."
sftp userid@host <<EOI
cd dir
ls -lt
bye
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cd incoming
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#!/bin/ksh
cd /path
sftp... (4 Replies)
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When I run this manully it works fine, however it was failing when run on cron. I have narrowed down the problem - it fails at the code that says if the error code is 0 then continue
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