How to pass password automatically for rsync SSH command?

Question

Use "sshpass" non-interactive ssh password provider utility

On Ubuntu

 sudo apt-get install sshpass

Command to rsync

 /usr/bin/rsync -ratlz --rsh="/usr/bin/sshpass -p password ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -l username" src_path  dest_path

You should use a keyfile without passphrase for scripted ssh logins. This is obviously a security risk, take care that the keyfile itself is adequately secured.

Instructions for setting up passwordless ssh access

You can avoid the password prompt on rsync command by setting the environment variable RSYNC_PASSWORD to the password you want to use or using the --password-file option.

I got it to work like this:

sshpass -p "password" rsync -ae "ssh -p remote_port_ssh" /local_dir  remote_user@remote_host:/remote_dir

If you can't use a public/private keys, you can use expect:

#!/usr/bin/expect
spawn rsync SRC DEST
expect "password:"
send "PASS\n"
expect eof
if [catch wait] {
    puts "rsync failed"
    exit 1
}
exit 0

You will need to replace SRC and DEST with your normal rsync source and destination parameters, and replace PASS with your password. Just make sure this file is stored securely!

Use a ssh key.

Look at ssh-keygen and ssh-copy-id.

After that you can use an rsync this way :

rsync -a --stats --progress --delete /home/path server:path