Python: Execute scp, stdin for password not working

Question

I'm trying the following

from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
Popen(["scp", "-B","user@url:file", "."], stdin=PIPE, shell=False).communicate(input="password")

But I still get the password promt, and no password is sent. I know I can use scp with keys, but this is not what I need.

Any help?

This question might interest you: stackoverflow.com/questions/250283/how-to-scp-in-python — David Webb
– David Webb, Commented Nov 10, 2010 at 12:13

mouad · Accepted Answer · 2010-11-10 12:15:51Z

2

scp interacts with the terminal directly, rather than reading from STDIN, You can't pass the password via a pipe, it security matter for scp and it's the same for sftp, ssh.

you can try it in you terminal like this (and it will not work):

echo "password" | scp me@localhost:test .

answered Nov 10, 2010 at 12:15

mouad

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Dave Kirby · Accepted Answer · 2010-11-10 13:44:55Z

1

As others have said, scp (and ssh) read the password directly from the console instead of stdin, so using subprocess to send the password will not work. You can use pexpect instead - see the docs and numerous examples for how to do this.

answered Nov 10, 2010 at 13:44

Dave Kirby

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