Automating SFTP via Scripting through Cron

[Jason Mecucci]

We have a lot of automated FTP scripts, but we are just not moving to SFTP so that we aren't transfering clear text passwords since this FTP server is on a more senstive network.

Does anyone have any good documents on how to script the sftp process, or if you could just give me an example of a sftp script where you logged in with a username and password and did a get or a put.

Thanks in advance,
Jason

[Steven E. Protter]

automated sftp scripting will work just like automated ftp scripting.

The ascii binary command needs to be removed

sftp user@hostname >> EOF
password
cd
get *
put *
EOF

This method is insecure.

It hard codes a password to a file. It is not necessary.

sftp comes with a command called scp.

scp works like rcp but its secure. You can exchange public keys(see attached doc) and do transfers as follows:

scp * targethost://directory

Secure, no passwords hardcoded into scripts.

SEP

[John Poff]

Hi,

You can use the '-b' option with sftp to specify a batchfile of commands for it to use. I would suggest configuring your sftp/ssh so that it doesn't require usernames or passwords (non-interactive authentication), so that you don't have them inside of your batch file.

JP

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Hi Jason,

For 'sftp' all you have to do is to setup public/private key authentication. For ex., if you are sftping as user1 on sys1 to user2 on sys2, then do

user1@sys1:ssh-keygen -t dsa -N ""

user1@sys1: ll .ssh/id_dsa.pub
Copy id_dsa.pub file onto sys2 into /tmp dir
user2@sys2: mkdir -p .ssh
user2@sys2:cd .ssh
user2@sys2:cat /tmp/id_dsa.pub >> authorized_Keys

user1@sys1:sftp user2@sys2 << EOF
cd /somewhere
put somefiles\*
quit
EOF

Above shouldn't prompt for a password. If you are going to hardcode username and password, then even sftp will be unsecure though not as bad as ftp.

-Sri

[Jason Mecucci]

How to stop shell script using SFTP from being in an interactive mode? For eg, with FTP you can use FTP â in?

Thanks for all the support so far!
Ja

[Sridhar Bhaskarla · Accepted solution]

Hi Jason,

What I do is to specify only publickey authentication. So, if it fails, it will not go keyboard interactive. For ex.,

sftp -o "PreferredAuthentications publickey" << EOF
...
..
EOF

-Sri

[Jason Mecucci]

thanks guys, you've been a lot of help!