Shell script to automate SFTP Upload

sftp

I've been trying to get a PHP script to SFTP upload a file, but failed. I tried asking my question on stackoverflow.com but haven't received a working solution:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1767117/how-to-sftp-upload-files-from-php

So now I want to try a different approach. Is there a way to write a shell script that can issue several commands to sftp upload a file to another server? If I were to issue commands one by one from terminal, it would look like:

>sftp user@server.com
>password: mypassword
>put file.csv

I tried putting these three lines into a ./automaticupload file. When I executed the file, but the terminal shows me:

user@server.com's password:

even though I typed in the password line in automaticupload.

I am unable to create a passwordless ssh/scp/sftp account. The remote server.com does not give me ssh or scp access.

What should I do?

Best Answer

If you want to use sftp from a script you need to setup passwordless SSH keys with ssh-keygen(1) or use sshpass

My vote would nearly always be for the former, but it can depend on the situation which is more appropiate.

Related Solutions

Ssh – SFTP logging: is there a way

OpenSSH versions 4.4p1 and up (which should include the latest version with CentOS 5) have SFTP logging capability built in - you just need to configure it.

Find this in your sshd_config (in centos, file /etc/ssh/sshd_config):

Subsystem       sftp    /usr/libexec/openssh/sftp-server

and change it to:

Subsystem       sftp    /usr/libexec/openssh/sftp-server -l INFO

INFO is just one level of detail over what you're seeing by default - it provides detailed information regarding file transfers, permission changes, etc. If you need more info, you can adjust the log level accordingly. The various levels (in order of detail) are:

QUIET, FATAL, ERROR, INFO, VERBOSE, DEBUG, DEBUG1, DEBUG2, and DEBUG3

Anything over VERBOSE is probably more information than you're looking for, but it might be useful.

Finally restart the SSH service to update the changes (centos):

systemctl restart sshd

Passwordless sftp upload commands not executed using a shell script

sftp username@ipaddress will have sftp enter interactive mode. (Thats why you get an sftp style prompt)

sftp man page

Since you are using sftp programmability, you want to use it in non interactive mode.

sftp $username@$ipaddr:$external_path/filename
#this would work except you need your wildcard * to be expanded

echo "get *" | sftp $username@$ipaddr:$external_path/
#This will work since you are piping the command get * into sftp. 
#* gets expanded by sftp and matching files in $external_path
#Are transfered to your current directory.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ssh – SFTP logging: is there a way

Passwordless sftp upload commands not executed using a shell script

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