Answer by MerryDan for Can you set passwords in .ssh/config to allow automatic login?

Thanks, Arek for the inspiration...

Rather than running another shell process, this is just a function running in the current bash shell. It runs a single awk command to parse the config file and figure out if it should take the password from a shell variable or from the password written cleartext into the ssh config file (with awk in an eval instead of declare due to issues I hit using declare).

I tried so many ways of using sshpass directly in an ssh config file using ProxyCommand, but nothing seemed to work as expected, except when I could log in to a box via RSA and then I needed to send a password to open my encrypted directory. However, my function below seems to work for me in all cases, even for Cygwin.

# In your .bash_profilefunction ssh(){    host=$1;    unset PASSWORD    unset PASSVAR    eval $(awk "/ *#[Pp]assvar / && inhost { printf \"PASSVAR=%s\",\$2; exit 1 } / *#[Pp]assword / && inhost { printf \"PASSWORD=%s\",\$2; } /^#?[Hh][oO][sS][tT] / && inhost { inhost=0; exit 1 } /^[Hh][oO][sS][tT] $host\$/ { inhost=1 }" ~/.ssh/config)    if [[ -z "$PASSWORD" ]] && [[ -z "$PASSVAR" ]]; then        /usr/bin/ssh -q $* 2>/dev/null    else       if [[ -n "$PASSVAR" ]]; then          PASSWORD=$(TMP=${!PASSVAR-*};echo ${TMP##*-})       fi       /usr/local/bin/sshpass -p"$PASSWORD" /usr/bin/ssh -q $* 2>/dev/null    fi}# and setup your passwords (perhaps in .bashrc instead...)MYPASS_ENVVAR=SomePasswordMYPASSWD_FROM_FILE=$(</home/me/.passwd_in_file)

Then a ~/.ssh/config section looks like this:

Host MyHostname Port 22 Hostname 2.1.2.2 User merrydan #Passvar MYPASS_ENVVAR #Password Some!Password

If a #Passvar exists in the config section this overrides the #Password.
$MYPASS_ENVVAR is the environment variable holding your password.

Enjoy!

And something to handle most scp scenarios (not fully fleshed but at least a start...)

function scp(){    host=$(echo $* | perl -pe 's/^.*?([A-Za-z-1-9-]+):.*?$/\1/;');    unset PASSWORD    unset PASSVAR    eval $(awk "/^#[Pp]assvar / && inhost { printf \"PASSVAR=%s\",\$2; exit 1; } /^ *#[Pp]assword / && inhost { printf \"PASSWORD=%s\",\$2; } /^#?[Hh][oO][sS][tT] / && inhost { inhost=0; exit 1; } /^[Hh][oO][sS][tT] $host\$/ { inhost=1 }" ~/.ssh/config.d/*)    if [[ -z "$PASSWORD" ]] && [[ -z "$PASSVAR" ]]; then        #echo /usr/bin/scp -3 $*        /usr/bin/scp -3 $* || true        #echo "SSH Exit Code $?"    else       if [[ -n "$PASSVAR" ]]; then          #PASSWORD=`echo ${!PASSVAR}`          PASSWORD=$(TMP=${!PASSVAR-*};echo ${TMP##*-})       fi       #echo /usr/local/bin/sshpass -p"$PASSWORD" /usr/bin/scp -3 $*       /usr/bin/sshpass -p"$PASSWORD" /usr/bin/scp -3 $* || true       #echo "SSHPass Exit Code $?"    fi}