Rsync cron job with a password

croncronjobrsync

I want to set up an rsync command as a cron job, so I need to find a way to supply my server password automatically to rsync.

Currently I have a shell script that looks like this:

#!/bin/sh
rsync *.rss me@myserver.com:/home/dir --password-file ~/rsync.password

The rsync.password file just contains my password.

However, when I run the script, I get:

The --password-file option may only be used when accessing an rsync daemon.
rsync error: syntax or usage error (code 1) at main.c(1241) [sender=3.0.7]

Could anyone let me know how to fix this, so I can start to run the shell script as a cron job?

Best Answer

What you really want to do is look at setting up public keys between the servers so they 'trust' each other and passwords are not needed.

Have a read here:

http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2011/07/rsync-over-ssh-without-password/

http://blogs.oracle.com/jkini/entry/how_to_scp_scp_and

Related Solutions

Linux – Rsync –password-file Not Working

--password-file only sets a password if you're using the rsync daemon. It has no effect when using rsync over rsh or ssh.

The recommended authentication method over ssh is to use public keys. It's both the secure method and the simple method. Generate a private key on the client side (ssh-keygen) and run ssh-copy-id to copy it to the server.

If there's an extremely good reason why you're not using ssh keys (hint: there probably isn't), you can use expect to insert the SSH password into the stream. It's not supposed to be easy to do, in fact SSH is designed to make this difficult, for good reason (passwords are bad for security, and the way you're using that password makes it particularly exposed).

Rsync Permission denied backing up a remote directory to the local machine

You cannot back up a file which you cannot read otherwise, so the permissions will have to be either changed or overriden by root.

Your options in more detail:

Override the permissions by rsync'ing as root@myserver.com directly. (

...or by configuring sudo on the server to allow password-less running of the rsync server-side component.

me    ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/rsync --server --sender -vlogDtprze.iLsf . /var/www/

and

rsync --rsh="ssh me@myserver.com sudo" -avz /var/www/ /backups/...

Create a dedicated "website-backup" account on the server. Change the files' permissions to make them readable to the "website-backup" account; you may use ACLs and setfacl for that. Do not use this account for anything else.
```
rsync -avz website-backup@myserver.com:/var/www/ /backups/sites/mysite/
```
Write a script on the server which would dump /var/www/ into an encrypted tarball. Again, this can be done as root (via crontab) or by configuring sudo to not require a password for that script. For example:
```
#!/bin/sh
tar c /var/www/ | gpg -e -r mountainx@example.com
```
Backup would be done by pulling the entire tarball every time, which might be inefficient with large sites:
```
ssh me@myserver.com "sudo /usr/sbin/dump-website" > /backups/sites/mysite.tar.gpg
```
The password requirement would be removed by editing sudoers:
```
me     ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/dump-website
```

Best Answer

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Linux – Rsync –password-file Not Working

Rsync Permission denied backing up a remote directory to the local machine

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