If you are anything like me, you are always looking for ways to automate repetitive tasks. One task that I find myself doing quite often is entering passwords into shell scripts. While this may not seem like a big deal, it can be a pain if you have to do it often.
Fortunately, there is a way to automate password input in shell scripts. All you need is a program called expect. Expect is a tool for automating interactive applications such as telnet, ftp, passwd, ssh, and many others.
In order to use expect, you will need to have it installed on your system. If you are using a Debian-based distribution, you can install it with the following command:
sudo apt-get install expect
Once expect is installed, you can start using it to automate password input in your shell scripts. To do this, you will need to create a file called password.exp with the following contents:
#!/usr/bin/expect -f
spawn
expect “Password:”
send “
expect eof
Replace
chmod +x password.exp
You can now run the script with the following command:
./password.exp
You will notice that the script will not output anything. This is because expect is designed to work silently. However, you can add the -d option to the expect command to have it print out debugging information.
That’s all there is to using expect to automate password input in shell scripts. Expect is a powerful tool that can be used for a variety of tasks. I encourage you to check out the expect man page for more information on what it can do.
Other related questions:
How do you pass a script password?
You can pass a script password by using the -p option. For example:
myscript.pl -p mypassword
How do I password a bash script?
There is no built-in way to password-protect a shell script. However, you can use the ‘read’ command to prompt the user for a password before executing the rest of the script. For example:
#!/bin/bash
echo -n “Enter password: ”
read password
if [ “$password” == “secret” ]; then
echo “Password accepted.”
# Rest of script goes here.
else
echo “Incorrect password.”
exit 1
fi
Can I pass password in SSH command?
No, you cannot.
How do I run a password using SSH?
To run a password using SSH, you will need to use the -p option.