What is sshpass and how to use it

What is sshpass?

The sshpass utility is designed to run SSH using the keyboard-interactive password authentication mode, but in a non-interactive way. SSH uses direct TTY access to ensure that the password is indeed issued by an interactive keyboard user. sshpass runs SSH in a dedicated TTY, fooling SSH into thinking it is getting the password from an interactive user. If automation is needed when using SSH password authentication, then a sshpass can be used.

How to Install

## For RHEL 7 subscription-manager repos --enable=rhel-7-server-rpms \ --enable=rhel-7-server-optional-rpms \ --enable=rhel-7-server-extras-rpms \ --enable=rhel-ha-for-rhel-7-server-rpms yum install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm yum install sshpass

Examples

## Simple example, provide the password to sshpass and let it ssh to your server sshpass -p MyPassword ssh username@host.example.com ## Same example with strict HostKey checking disabled sshpass -p MyPassword -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no username@host.example.com ## using a password file to store the password. The password should be the first line of the file echo MyPassword > passwordfile chmod 0400 passwordfile sshpass -f passwordfile ssh username@host.example.com ## Using a hidden password file and encrypting the password file with GPG ## when invoking the ssh, the .gpg file is decrypted and then piped to sshpassecho MyPassword > .sshpasswd gpg -c .sshpasswd rm .sshpasswd gpg -d -q .sshpasswd.gpg | sshpass ssh username@host.example.com## REFERENCES https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/ssh-automation-sshpass