----- Original Message ----- From: "Hemond, Steve" To: Sent: Friday, May 28, 2004 7:27 AM Subject: [SLE] Script to SCP files Hi people, I need to migrate stuff from an Aix server to a SuSE Linux server and I will do this by copying the files using SCP. It works very well, as long as I am there to type the password! I would like to put many scp commands (one for each filesystem i need to copy) in a script but actually it won't work because I have to type the password for every scp command. Is there any way I can avoid the password prompt or maybe include it in the script? Or is there any better way to copy stuff like that? Thanks a lot for your answers, Best regards, Steve Hemond Programmeur / Programmer Smurfit-Stone, Ressources Forestières La Tuque, P.Q. Phone : (819) 676-8100 X2833 Mail : shemond@smurfit.com I do not know a whole lot about AIX, but here is how to do it between to linux machines: Basic Idea No-password authentication works because of public key crypto. Let's say you have a local machine Ooga and a remote machine Booga. You want to be able to ssh from Ooga to Booga without having to enter your password. First you generate a public/private RSA key pair on Ooga. Then you send your public key to Booga, so that Booga knows that Ooga's key belongs to a list of authorized keys. Then when you try to ssh from Ooga to Booga, RSA authentication is performed automagically. Here are detailed steps on how to do this. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- ssh1 If you're using ssh1, then do this: ooga% ssh-keygen -f ~/.ssh/identity This will generate a public/private rsa1 key pair. When it asks you to enter your passphrase, just hit return (i.e. leave it empty). Now you need to send your public key to the remote server. ooga% cd .ssh ooga% scp identity.pub user@booga:~/.ssh Now you need to log into Booga and add Ooga's public key to Booga's list of authorized keys. ooga% ssh user@booga booga% cd .ssh booga% cat identity.pub >> authorized_keys booga% chmod 640 authorized_keys booga% rm -f identity.pub That's it! You can now ssh from Ooga to Booga without entering your password. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- ssh2 It's harder for ssh2. There are two common implementations of ssh2: OpenSSH and SSH2. Let's say we want to ssh from Ooga to Booga. If Ooga and Booga both run the same implementation then it's easy. Otherwise, we need to do some extra work to make them talk to each other properly. My particular situation is that my local machine is running Windows 2000 with the Cygwin tools and OpenSSH 3.2.x. The remote machines may either have OpenSSH or SSH2. I'll cover these two cases below. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- ssh2: Ooga = OpenSSH, Booga = OpenSSH First, generate a public/private DSA key pair on Ooga. ooga% ssh-keygen -t dsa -f ~/.ssh/id_dsa When you are asked for a passphrase, leave it empty. Now send the public key to Booga. ooga% cd .ssh ooga% scp id_dsa.pub user@booga:~/.ssh Next, log in to Booga and add the public key to the list of authorized keys. ooga% ssh user@booga booga% cd .ssh booga% cat id_dsa.pub >> authorized_keys2 booga% chmod 640 authorized_keys2 booga% rm -f id_dsa.pub Note that the filename is authorized_keys2, not authorized_keys. That's it; you're ready to ssh from Ooga to Booga without having to enter a password

On Fri, May 28, 2004 at 07:27:02AM -0500, Hemond, Steve wrote:

Hi people,

I need to migrate stuff from an Aix server to a SuSE Linux server and I will do this by copying the files using SCP. It works very well, as long as I am there to type the password!

I would like to put many scp commands (one for each filesystem i need to copy) in a script but actually it won't work because I have to type the password for every scp command.

Is there any way I can avoid the password prompt or maybe include it in the script?

You need to generate an SSH key on the machine which is initiating the scp command, and place it in your ~/.ssh area on the target machine. 'man ssh' for more details

Or is there any better way to copy stuff like that?

This is a perfectly valid way of doing it, but you might like to look at 'rsync'. HTH... -- David Smith Work Email: Dave.Smith@st.com STMicroelectronics Home Email: David.Smith@ds-electronics.co.uk Bristol, England GPG Key: 0xF13192F2