James, Others have already told you about using key pairs, but no one has addressed the security implications of an account that requires no password and no passphrase to access your system. You might want to create a special no-privilege user account for this. You really don't want someone tripping over this if the account has root privileges, for instance (nor do _you_ want to make a mistake with such an account).
If you're looking for a low-cost/no-cost monitoring tool, you might want to consider Big Brother (I can see Rich Smrcina smiling right now). It can do a whole lot of stuff without having to write anything. Mark Post -----Original Message----- From: Linux on 390 Port [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of James Melin Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2005 10:39 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Using ssh to execute a command on another system Got a question about ssh.... rexec provides an ability to execute a command on a remote system and pass the ID/Password on the command line. This prevents the session from prompting for a password. e.g: rexec -l username -p password hostname command the problem with rexec , of course, is that it is unsecure. ssh also allows command line invocation of a command on a remote system. This is good, in that it will do the authentication encrypted. What I do not know is how to do it all nice and neat from a script without being challenged for a password. What I am looking to do is to ssh to a specific linux, execute a command, capture the output of that command, parse that output and set some variables and write out a 'status page' html file. I do not know how to handle being asked for a password in a shell script. I've seen some stuff about the identity file, but that really isn't making sense to me either and certainly seems like overkill for what I'm doing. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
