How to pass password automatically for rsync SSH command?

I need to do rsync by ssh and want to do it automatically without the need of passing password for ssh manually.

14 Answers

Use "sshpass" non-interactive ssh password provider utility

On Ubuntu

 sudo apt-get install sshpass 

Command to rsync

 /usr/bin/rsync -ratlz --rsh="/usr/bin/sshpass -p password ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -l username" src_path dest_path 

You should use a keyfile without passphrase for scripted ssh logins. This is obviously a security risk, take care that the keyfile itself is adequately secured.

Instructions for setting up passwordless ssh access

You can avoid the password prompt on rsync command by setting the environment variable RSYNC_PASSWORD to the password you want to use or using the --password-file option.

I got it to work like this:

sshpass -p "password" rsync -ae "ssh -p remote_port_ssh" /local_dir remote_user@remote_host:/remote_dir 

If you can't use a public/private keys, you can use expect:

#!/usr/bin/expect spawn rsync SRC DEST expect "password:" send "PASS\n" expect eof if [catch wait] { puts "rsync failed" exit 1 } exit 0 

You will need to replace SRC and DEST with your normal rsync source and destination parameters, and replace PASS with your password. Just make sure this file is stored securely!

The following works for me:

SSHPASS='myPassword' /usr/bin/rsync -a -r -p -o -g --progress --modify-window=1 --exclude /folderOne -s -u --rsh="/usr/bin/sshpass -p $SSHPASS ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -l root" source-path myDomain:dest-path >&2 

I had to install sshpass

Use a ssh key.

Look at ssh-keygen and ssh-copy-id.

After that you can use an rsync this way :

rsync -a --stats --progress --delete /home/path server:path 

Another interesting possibility:

1. generate RSA, or DSA key pair (as it was described)
2. put public key to host (as it was already described)
3. run:

 rsync --partial --progress --rsh="ssh -i dsa_private_file" host_name@host:/home/me/d . 

Note: -i dsa_private_file which is your RSA/DSA private key

Basically, this approach is very similar to the one described by @Mad Scientist, however you do not have to copy your private key to ~/.ssh. In other words, it is useful for ad-hoc tasks (one time passwordless access)

Automatically entering the password for the rsync command is difficult. My simple solution to avoid the problem is to mount the folder to be backed up. Then use a local rsync command to backup the mounted folder.

mount -t cifs //server/source/ /mnt/source-tmp -o username=Username,password=password rsync -a /mnt/source-tmp /media/destination/ umount /mnt/source-tmp 

The official solution (and others) were incomplete when I first visited, so I came back, years later, to post this alternate approach in case any others wound up here intending to use a public/private key-pair:

Execute this from the target backup machine, which pulls from source to target backup

rsync -av --delete -e 'ssh -p 59333 -i /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa' user@10.9.9.3:/home/user/Server/ /home/keith/Server/

Execute this from the source machine, which sends from source to target backup

rsync -av --delete -e 'ssh -p 59333 -i /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa' /home/user/Server/ user@10.9.9.3:/home/user/Server/

And, if you are not using an alternate port for ssh, then consider the more elegant examples below:

Execute this from the target backup machine, which pulls from source to target backup:

sudo rsync -avi --delete user@10.9.9.3:/var/www/ /media/sdb1/backups/www/

Execute this from the source machine, which sends from source to target backup:

sudo rsync -avi --delete /media/sdb1/backups/www/ user@10.9.9.3:/var/www/

If you are still getting prompted for a password, then you need to check your ssh configuration in /etc/ssh/sshd_config and verify that the users in source and target each have the others' respective public ssh key by sending each over with ssh-copy-id user@10.9.9.3.

(Again, this is for using ssh key-pairs without a password, as an alternate approach, and not for passing the password over via a file.)

Though you've already implemented it by now,

you can also use any expect implementation (you'll find alternatives in Perl, Python: pexpect, paramiko, etc..)

I use a VBScript file for doing this on Windows platform, it servers me very well.

set shell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell") shell.run"rsync -a Name@192.168.1.100:/Users/Name/Projects/test ." WScript.Sleep 100 shell.SendKeys"Your_Password" shell.SendKeys "{ENTER}" 

Exposing a password in a command is not safe, especially when using a bash script, if you tried to work with keyfiles thats will be nice. create keys in your host with ssh-keygen and copy the public key with ssh-copy-id " and then use rsync addin the option -e "ssh -i $HOME/.ssh/(your private key)" to force rsync using ssh connection via the the private key that you create earlier.

example :

rsync -avh --exclude '$LOGS' -e "ssh -i $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa" --ignore-existing $BACKUP_DIR $DESTINATION_HOST:$DESTINATION_DIR;

Following the idea posted by Andrew Seaford, this is done using sshfs:

echo "SuperHardToGuessPass:P" | sshfs -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no :/mypath/ /mnt/source-tmp/ -o workaround=rename -o password_stdin rsync -a /mnt/source-tmp/ /media/destination/ umount /mnt/source-tmp