NAME

       sshpass - noninteractive ssh password provider

SYNOPSIS

       sshpass [-ffilename|-dnum|-ppassword|-e] [options] command arguments

DESCRIPTION

       This manual page documents the sshpass command.

       sshpass  is  a  utility  designed for running ssh using the mode referred to as "keyboard-
       interactive" password authentication, but in non-interactive mode.

       ssh uses direct TTY access to  make  sure  that  the  password  is  indeed  issued  by  an
       interactive  keyboard  user. Sshpass runs ssh in a dedicated tty, fooling it into thinking
       it is getting the password from an interactive user.

       The command to run is specified after sshpass' own options. Typically  it  will  be  "ssh"
       with  arguments, but it can just as well be any other command. The password prompt used by
       ssh is, however, currently hardcoded into sshpass.

Options

       If no option is given, sshpass reads the password from the standard input.  The  user  may
       give at most one alternative source for the password:

       -ppassword
              The password is given on the command line. Please note the section titled "SECURITY
              CONSIDERATIONS".

       -ffilename
              The password is the first line of the file filename.

       -dnumber
              number is a file descriptor inherited by sshpass from the runner. The  password  is
              read from the open file descriptor.

       -e     The password is taken from the environment variable "SSHPASS".

SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS

       First  and foremost, users of sshpass should realize that ssh's insistance on only getting
       the password interactively is not without reason. It is close to  impossible  to  securely
       store  the  password,  and  users  of  sshpass  should  consider  whether ssh's public key
       authentication provides the same end-user experience,  while  involving  less  hassle  and
       being more secure.

       The  -p  option  should  be  considered the least secure of all of sshpass's options.  All
       system users can see the password in the command line with a simple "ps" command.  Sshpass
       makes  a minimal attempt to hide the password, but such attempts are doomed to create race
       conditions without actually solving the problem. Users of sshpass are  encouraged  to  use
       one of the other password passing techniques, which are all more secure.

       In  particular,  people  writing  programs  that  are  meant  to  communicate the password
       programatically are encouraged to use an anonymous pipe and pass the pipe's reading end to
       sshpass using the -d option.

RETURN VALUES

       As with any other program, sshpass returns 0 on success. In case of failure, the following
       return codes are used:

       1      Invalid command line argument

       2      Conflicting arguments given

       3      General runtime error

       4      Unrecognized response from ssh (parse error)

       5      Invalid/incorrect password

       6      Host public key is unknown. sshpass exits without confirming the new key.

       In addition, ssh might be complaining about a man in the  middle  attack.  This  complaint
       does  not  go to the tty. In other words, even with sshpass, the error message from ssh is
       printed to standard error. In such a case ssh's return code  is  reported  back.  This  is
       typically an unimaginative (and non-informative) "255" for all error cases.

EXAMPLES

       Run  rsync  over  SSH  using  password authentication, passing the password on the command
       line:

       rsync --rsh='sshpass -p 12345 ssh -l test' host.example.com:path .

       To do the same from a bourne shell script in a marginally less exposed way:

       SSHPASS=12345 rsync --rsh='sshpass -e ssh -l test' host.example.com:path .

BUGS

       Sshpass is in its infancy at the moment. As such, bugs are highly possible. In particular,
       if  the  password is read from stdin (no password option at all), it is possible that some
       of the input aimed to be passed to ssh will be read by sshpass and lost.

       Sshpass utilizes the pty(7) interface to control the TTY for ssh. This interface, at least
       on  Linux,  has  a  misfeature where if no slave file descriptors are open, the master pty
       returns EIO. This is the normal behavior, except a slave pty may be born at any point by a
       program  opening  /dev/tty.  This  makes it impossible to reliably wait for events without
       consuming 100% of the CPU.

       Over the various versions different approaches were attempted  at  solving  this  problem.
       Any  given  version  of  sshpass  is  released  with  the  belief  that it is working, but
       experience has shown that these things do, occasionally, break. This happened with OpenSSH
       version 5.6.  As of this writing, it is believed that sshpass is, again, working properly.