Hide/encrypt password in bash file to stop accidentally seeing it

I used base64 for the overcoming the same problem, i.e. people can see my password over my shoulder.

Here is what I did - I created a new "db_auth.cfg" file and created parameters with one being my db password. I set the permission as 750 for the file.

DB_PASSWORD=Z29vZ2xl

In my shell script I used the "source" command to get the file and then decode it back to use in my script.

source path_to_the_file/db_auth.cfg
DB_PASSWORD=$(eval echo ${DB_PASSWORD} | base64 --decode)

I hope this helps.

OpenSSL provides a passwd command that can encrypt but doesn't decrypt as it only does hashes. You could also download something like aesutil so you can use a capable and well-known symmetric encryption routine.

For example:

#!/bin/sh    
# using aesutil
SALT=$(mkrand 15) # mkrand generates a 15-character random passwd
MYENCPASS="i/b9pkcpQAPy7BzH2JlqHVoJc2mNTBM=" # echo "passwd" | aes -e -b -B -p $SALT 
MYPASS=$(echo "$MYENCPASS" | aes -d -b -p $SALT)

# and usage
serverControl.sh -u admin -p $MYPASS -c shutdown