Master Non-Interactive SSH with sshpass: Quick Password-less Automation

ssh is a common Linux service that requires interactive password entry, which complicates automation in shell scripts. While password‑less SSH can be configured, it is cumbersome; an alternative is using expect to script password input. A simpler tool is sshpass , which allows non‑interactive SSH by specifying the password directly.

Usage Examples

(1) Specify password on the command line

./sshpass -p password ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no [email protected] -p port "ls"

Use -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no to skip the first‑time host key check. The -p port option sets the remote SSH port; it can be omitted for the default port.

Remote copy example:

./sshpass -p password scp -P port 15.28.16.3:/root/test.txt .

(2) Use a password file

echo "password" > ssh_passwd

./sshpass -f ssh_passwd ssh -o [email protected] "ls"

(3) Read password from an environment variable

export SSHPASS="password"

./sshpass -e ssh -o [email protected] "ls"

Installing sshpass

Download URL: http://sourceforge.net/projects/sshpass/ Installation steps:

tar zxvf sshpass-1.05.tar.gz
cd sshpass-1.05
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/sshpass
make
make install

After installation, the sshpass command is located in /usr/local/sshpass/bin and can be executed directly.