Question

I need a script that updates my copy of a repository. When I type “svn up” I usually am forced to enter a password, how do I automate the password entry?

What I’ve tried:

import pexpect, sys, re

pexpect.run("svn cleanup")

child = pexpect.spawn('svn up')
child.logfile = sys.stdout

child.expect("Enter passphrase for key \'/home/rcompton/.ssh/id_rsa\':")

child.sendline("majorSecurityBreach")

matchanything = re.compile('.*', re.DOTALL)

child.expect(matchanything)

child.close()

But it does not seem to be updating.

edit: If it matters, I can get my repository to update with child.interact()

import pexpect, sys, re

pexpect.run("svn cleanup")

child = pexpect.spawn('svn up')
child.logfile = sys.stdout

i = child.expect("Enter passphrase for key \'/home/rcompton/.ssh/id_rsa\':")

child.interact()

allows me to enter my password and starts updating. However, I end up with an error anyway.

-bash-3.2$ python2.7 exRepUpdate.py 
Enter passphrase for key '/home/rcompton/.ssh/id_rsa':  

At revision 4386.
At revision 4386.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "exRepUpdate.py", line 13, in <module>
    child.interact()
  File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/pexpect.py", line 1497, in interact
  File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/pexpect.py", line 1525, in __interact_copy
  File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/pexpect.py", line 1515, in __interact_read
OSError: [Errno 5] Input/output error

edit: Alright I found a way around plaintext password entry. An important detail I left out (which, honestly, I didn’t think I’d need since this seemed like it would be an easy problem) is that I had to send a public key to our IT dept. when I first got access to the repo. Avoiding the password entry with in the ssh+svn that I’m dealing with can be done with ssh-agent. This link: http://mah.everybody.org/docs/ssh gives an easy overview. The solution Joseph M. Reagle by way of Daniel Starin only requires I enter my password one time ever, on login, allowing me to execute my script each night despite the password entry.

Answer 1

If you don’t want to type password many times, but still have a secure solution you can use ssh-agent to keep your key passphrases for a while. If you use your default private key simply type ssh-add and give your passphrase when asked.

More details on ssh-add command usage are here: linux.die.net/man/1/ssh-add