I have been struggling with a project that requires me to use sftp.
After working through all the issues getting sftp working on AIX 5.3,
I now need to automate the sftp process. This appears harder than it
should be. It appears that getting past the password prompt is a
frustration everyone runs up against. After much reading, I thought
Expect was the key and I installed it. Unfortunately, it does not
seem to be working. Here is what I am trying:

# /usr/bin/expect << EOF
> spawn sftp username@sftp.site.com
> expect "password:"
> send "my_password"
> expect "sftp>"
> send "ls"
> expect "sftp>"
> send "quit"
> EOF

And here is what I am getting:

spawn sftp username@sftp.site.com
Connecting to sftp.site.com...
username@sftp.site.com's password: #

As you can see, I am still being prompted for the password. What am I
doing incorrectly?

-Thanks

In comp.unix.shell rsine <rsine@stationeryhouse.com>:
> I have been struggling with a project that requires me to use sftp.
[..]

> As you can see, I am still being prompted for the password. What am I
> doing incorrectly?

Simply setup ssh keylogin and you do not need a password at all:

$ sftp localhost
Connecting to localhost...
sftp>

It is explained in the ssh man page:

man ssh
/authorized_keys

And there are probably hundreds of guides online accessible
through a web search how to set this up. Extra points for running
ssh-agent, though you should do better even with an empty pass
phrase then putting the password in a file.

Good luck

--
Michael Heiming (X-PGP-Sig > GPG-Key ID: EDD27B94)
mail: echo zvpunry@urvzvat.qr | perl -pe 'y/a-z/n-za-m/'
#bofh excuse 13: we're waiting for [the phone company] to fix
that line

On Fri, 13 Jul 2007 08:03:19 -0700, rsine
<rsine@stationeryhouse.com> wrote:
>
>
> I have been struggling with a project that requires me to use sftp.
> After working through all the issues getting sftp working on AIX 5.3,
> I now need to automate the sftp process. This appears harder than it
> should be. It appears that getting past the password prompt is a
> frustration everyone runs up against. After much reading, I thought
> Expect was the key and I installed it. Unfortunately, it does not
> seem to be working. Here is what I am trying:
>
> # /usr/bin/expect << EOF
>> spawn sftp username@sftp.site.com
>> expect "password:"
>> send "my_password"
send "my_password\r"


--
Police are unsure if the same wookie is involved in Sunday's assault.

On Jul 13, 1:04 pm, Bill Marcum <marcumb...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Jul 2007 08:03:19 -0700, rsine <rs...@stationeryhouse.com> wrote:
>
> > I have been struggling with a project that requires me to use sftp.
> > After working through all the issues getting sftp working on AIX 5.3,
> > I now need to automate the sftp process. This appears harder than it
> > should be. It appears that getting past the password prompt is a
> > frustration everyone runs up against. After much reading, I thought
> > Expect was the key and I installed it. Unfortunately, it does not
> > seem to be working. Here is what I am trying:
>
> > # /usr/bin/expect << EOF
> >> spawn sftp usern...@sftp.site.com
> >> expect "password:"
> >> send "my_password"
>
> send "my_password\r"
>
> --
> Police are unsure if the same wookie is involved in Sunday's assault.

Bill,

I think my issue is with the password. The vendor created one with "$
$" in it ala AbCDE$$123. I know the "$" symbol has a special meaning
for Unix. How can I pass the "$$" in a password? Enclosing the
password in quotes did not .

On Jul 13, 1:17 pm, rsine <rs...@stationeryhouse.com> wrote:
> On Jul 13, 1:04 pm, Bill Marcum <marcumb...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Fri, 13 Jul 2007 08:03:19 -0700, rsine <rs...@stationeryhouse.com> wrote:
>
> > > I have been struggling with a project that requires me to use sftp.
> > > After working through all the issues getting sftp working on AIX 5.3,
> > > I now need to automate the sftp process. This appears harder than it
> > > should be. It appears that getting past the password prompt is a
> > > frustration everyone runs up against. After much reading, I thought
> > > Expect was the key and I installed it. Unfortunately, it does not
> > > seem to be working. Here is what I am trying:
>
> > > # /usr/bin/expect << EOF
> > >> spawn sftp usern...@sftp.site.com
> > >> expect "password:"
> > >> send "my_password"
>
> > send "my_password\r"
>
> > --
> > Police are unsure if the same wookie is involved in Sunday's assault.
>
> Bill,
>
> I think my issue is with the password. The vendor created one with "$
> $" in it ala AbCDE$$123. I know the "$" symbol has a special meaning
> for Unix. How can I pass the "$$" in a password? Enclosing the
> password in quotes did not .- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Thanks for all the . After more research, I discovered
autoexpect. Using this tool, I was able to capture all that I was
executing. Looking at the autoexpect file, I found the password
needed the dollar signs entered as "\$\$" and the "\r" needed to be
concatenated to the data (I was leaving a space between).

For all those novices like me, here is what I found to work:

expect << EOF
spawn sftp username@sftp.site.com
expect "password:"
send -- "my_pa\$\$word\r"
expect "sftp> "
send -- "ls\r"
expect "sftp> "
send -- "exit\r"
EOF