Copy my ssh key to remote machine via ssh-copy-id in a script without prompt?

My usecase is that i need to copy my ssh key for authorized access onto a remote machine. I need to be able to call a script that copies over my ssh key to the remote machine without needing my input. Currently it prompts for a password and also a yes to the RSA fingerprint. I need it to be able to automatically add my hosts to each other via an IP range

3 Answers

I believe you can use sshpass.

• Ubuntu/Debian: apt-get install sshpass
• Fedora/CentOS: yum install sshpass

For example:

sshpass -p "PASSWORD" ssh-copy-id -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no USERNAME@IP

For ssh password prompt, try to use ansible/ansible-playbook -k/--ask-pass. It will call sshpass(FYI, maybe OSX don't ship with sshpass by default).

For host key checking, add

[defaults]
host_key_checking = False

in ~/.ansible.cfg or /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg.

Or export ANSIBLE_HOST_KEY_CHECKING=False just like this manual says.

For ssh keys deploy, use authorized_keys module in ansible playbook. It's easier for user to keep the scripts idempotency.

If you're ok with inputting the password once, the following script will copy your ssh key to a large number of hosts (listed in hosts.txt) very fast without having to put your password on the command line:

# sudo yum install moreutils sshpass openssh-clients
echo 'Input Password:';
read -s SSHPASS;
export SSHPASS;
parallel -i -j 25 sshpass -e ssh-copy-id '-o ConnectTimeout=10 -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no {}' -- `cat hosts.txt`;
export SSHPASS=''