If you are looking for a way to automate SFTP transfers in a shell script, then this article is for you. We will show you how to use the expect command to automate SFTP tasks in a shell script. Expect is a tool for automating interactive applications such as SFTP, FTP, Telnet, SSH, etc.
The expect command waits for the user to enter a specific string of characters. It then sends the specified string to the program. In this way, you can automate any interactive application.
The following is a simple expect script that automates the SFTP task of downloading a file from a remote server.
#!/usr/bin/expect -f
# Connect to remote server
spawn sftp user@remote_server
# Wait for password prompt
expect “Password:”
# Send password
send “my_password\r”
# Wait for sftp prompt
expect “sftp>”
# Send get command
send “get file_to_download.txt\r”
# Wait for download to complete
expect “sftp>”
# Exit
send “exit\r”
In the above script, we first connect to the remote server using the spawn command. We then wait for the password prompt and send the password. Next, we wait for the sftp prompt and send the get command to download the file. Finally, we exit the SFTP session.
You can also use the expect command to automate other tasks such as uploading files, changing directories, etc.
Other related questions:
How Pass password in SFTP command line?
sftp user@example.com
user@example.com’s password: ********
How do I automate a SFTP file transfer?
There are a few different ways that you could automate a SFTP file transfer. One way would be to use a tool like WinSCP which has a scriptable command line interface that you could use to automate file transfers.
Another way would be to use a tool like PuTTY which also has a command line interface that can be used to automate file transfers.
Finally, you could also write your own script or program to automate file transfers using the SFTP protocol.
How do I SFTP a Unix shell script?
log into the server via SFTP
enter the desired directory
upload the shell script
To run the script, use the “execute” command:
execute script.sh
How do I get SFTP username and password?
There is no definitive answer to this question as it depends on your particular SFTP server setup. However, you can typically find this information in the documentation for your SFTP server, or by contacting your SFTP server administrator.
Bibliography
- Automate SFTP using shell script with password in Linux/Unix
- How to run the sftp command with a password from Bash script?
- How to make the script automated to take password on its own?
- Sftp script to transfer files in Linux with password – Fedingo
- Sftp connection with password – The UNIX and Linux Forums
- How to automate sftp file transfers using expect utility
- How to automate sftp and remote shell calls? – Super User