I've got a sh-script for a backup
scp /mybackupdir/* backupuser@backupserver:/backup
Is there an easy way to add a passphrase to the scp? Or do I have to check if an ssh-agent is running and if not start one and add the key?
First, let's sort out some factoids that are easy to confuse:
In the context of SSH, when people use the term ...
... but of course that is only a convention and a great source of confusion.
That said, I try to answer your question:
In case you mean password-based SSH authentication:
In case you mean publickey authentication with a passphrase-encrypted private key file:
You can't provide passphrase to scp with argument.
However you can use authentication by key: ssh-keygen will generate rsa keys pair for authentication ssh-copy-id will copy your public key to another host.
if you can't or don't want to use authentication by keys then you can write expect script and provide passphrase from this script. It's not most secure way of implementing this!
authorized_keys
.
Aug 20, 2014 at 14:43
You should read this post:
3 Steps to Perform SSH Login Without Password Using ssh-keygen
and you can change your script to this:
rsync --rsh='ssh -p(Type your SSH port)' -av /yourBackupDir [email protected]:/backup | mail -s "backup on `hostname`" [email protected]
You don't need ssh-agent for publickey authentication. You can simply pass the required key to ssh or scp with the -i
command line argument.
-i
will prompt for a password if the private key is password protected. That's what they mean with "with passphrase"
Oct 22, 2020 at 14:58
If you do not want passphrase to be asked, enter empty passphrase (this is not password of either source or remote cient system), while creating the (rsa) key pair (public-private), using ssh-keygen.