knife bootstrap command without prompting password

Question

I am trying to write a bash script which contains the command for bootstrapping a Ubuntu client node using knife command. When I execute the script, the knife command was asking the sudo password of client node and once i type the password, it works as expected. But I am looking for an automated way without prompting password. Here is the command I used for bootstrapping.

knife bootstrap <IP_ADDRESS> -x <USER_NAME> -P <PASSWORD> --sudo 

After checking, knife bootstrap document, I have tried giving the ssh-password also like below, but with same result.

knife bootstrap <IP_ADDRESS> --ssh-user <USER_NAME> --ssh-password <PASSWORD> --sudo

What may be wrong with this command. I am expecting the knife command to automatically login to the client and bootstrap, but its asking like,

<IP_ADDRESS> knife sudo password:
 Enter your password:

Any ideas??

Answer 1

Looking through the doc this may be the parameter you need:

--use-sudo-password

Although the documentation seems to imply that the password that that will be used is the same for the ssh operation, I don't know if that will be sufficient in your case.

Reference: https://docs.chef.io/knife_bootstrap.html#knife-bootstrap-options

Answer 2

If you want to avoid using passwords , you could set up the ssh keys of your workstation on the chef-node and run the

knife bootstrap yourclient.domain.com -x <USER_NAME> -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa -N client1 --sudo

Answer 3

This is how I made this work.

echo <SSH_PASSWORD> | knife bootstrap <IP_ADDRESS> -x <USER_NAME> -P <PASSWORD> --sudo

Answer 4

I see a typo in your command

it should be --ssh-password

what you have is --sh-password

Answer 5

Check out the NOPASSWD option in the /etc/sudoers file. This configures sudo to suppress the password check.

Answer 6

There are two kinds of authentication happening:

1. The SSH connection (may be via a key or via a password)
2. The sudo authentication (usually, a password is required).

When you are first bootstrapping a machine, I don't think you can avoid needing the sudo password.

I've seen Ruby code that can pass a sudo password over the SSH connection (so the user doesn't have to type it in the middle of the command), but I don't think that knife has that built in.

Answer 7

It needs to be used in this way (worked for me)

knife bootstrap $ipaddr --ssh-user $userid --ssh-password $pswd --node-name $hostname --sudo --use-sudo-password -P $pswd

--use-sudo-password It is required to supply password for this option too, in the same way you supply for --ssh-password