How to make bash script ask for a password ?

Question

I want to secure execution of a program with a password.

How do i do that in bash ?

Thank you

Answer 1

stty_orig=`stty -g` # save original terminal setting.
stty -echo          # turn-off echoing.
read passwd         # read the password
stty $stty_orig     # restore terminal setting.

Answer 2

What exactly do you mean?

A bash script runs with the privileges of the caller. What you want is more likely done by the sudo command.

http://www.gratisoft.us/sudo/man/sudo.html

Answer 3

This read var pwd from stdin (echo disabled):

read -s  -p Password: pwd

Answer 4

If you need to grab a passwd to supply as a paramter to a program, then unicorns advice to just turn off the echo is good.
Having a passwd check in the script doesn't work - if the user can execute the bash script they also have permission to read it and see the passwd.

If you want to only allow people with a passwd to run a program then the secure way is to create a new user account that owns the program and have a script that uses 'sudo' to run the program as that user - it will prompt for the users passwd in a secure way.