4

I need to upload files to an SFTP server as part of an automated pipeline process (so can not be interactive). I do not have ssh access so I can not use scp or rsync.

I have had some success using the solution proposed in this answer:

sftp user@server <<EOF
put localPath remotePath
EOF

However I am looking for something a bit more solid, as I will have no indication if this fails. For example, if I wanted to download from an SFTP server I can use the following syntax:

sftp user@server:remotePath localPath

Is there an equivalent one-liner for uploading?

Inbar Rose
  • 273

2 Answers2

8

You can use "Batch Mode" of sftp. From manual: 

> -b batchfile
>              Batch mode reads a series of commands from an input batchfile instead of stdin.  Since it lacks user interaction it
>              should be used in conjunction with non-interactive authentication.  A batchfile of ‘-’ may be used to indicate
>              standard input.  sftp will abort if any of the following commands fail: get, put, reget, reput, rename, ln, rm,
>              mkdir, chdir, ls, lchdir, chmod, chown, chgrp, lpwd, df, symlink, and lmkdir.  Termination on error can be sup‐
>              pressed on a command by command basis by prefixing the command with a ‘-’ character (for example, -rm /tmp/blah*).

Which means, you create a temporary file with the commands and execute the commands in the file with "sftp -b tempfile user@server"

There are other tools around for such things, e.g. lftp

Marco
  • 461
5

The answer by Marco led me to create a simple script to wrap the process, but essentially what I am doing in the script is the following:

  1. creating a batchfile with put {local} {remote} commands for the file(s) to upload.
  2. running the following command:

sftp -b {batch_file} -i {identity_file} -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no {username}@{hostname}

This command will work without needing any input from the user, and will have an error code that can be checked for success or failure.

I just wanted to include this answer here in a more complete form for future visitors.

Inbar Rose
  • 273