[rhn-users] Automation Task

[RHN-Users Readers]

On Wed, 2004-03-03 at 19:05, Sterling, James A wrote:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bob Gorman [mailto:bob at rsi.com] 
> Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2004 1:54 PM
> To: rhn-users at redhat.com
> Subject: Re: [rhn-users] Automation Task
> 
> At 01:33 PM 3/4/2004, Jorge wrote:
> >Hello. I need a process that makes a FTP connection to another Linux 
> >machine and copy some files . This process must be non-interactive 
> >because I'll use cron to run it every night. I don't know how can I do 
> >it. I'm thinking about a shell script but I don't know if I can do it.
> >How can I do it?


If you have ssh configured right, and use key/certificate-based
authentication instead of user-entered password, and set up a dedicated
user account (with no other permissions) then perhaps scp would do the
job for you? I would want to do this without a shell on the far machine,
but I don't know scp well enough to know if it requires a shell -- a
shell might be security risk, although the login credentials should be
strong enough to give you some protection.

Anyway, if you can get scp to do the job for you, it's more secure than
using FTP. I have a few small files I have to transfer, and for those I
encrypt using PGP (in my cron job) before using ncftpput to deliver the
files to a location of my choosing. The files are examined by a human
(if/when required) who knows the corresponding PGP private key.

Hope one or other of these pointers helps.


-- 
Best regards,
James.

(Axoria Ltd, UK.)
http://www.axoria.net/