Importing Data - Apache Sqoop - page 14

Solution
You have two options besides specifying the password on the command line with the
--password parameter. The first option is to use the parameter -P that will instruct
Sqoop to read the password from standard input. Alternatively, you can save your pass‐
word in a file and specify the path to this file with the parameter --password-file .
Here's a Sqoop execution that will read the password from standard input:
sqoop import \
--connect jdbc:mysql://mysql.example.com/sqoop \
--username sqoop \
--table cities \
-P
Here's an example of reading the password from a file:
sqoop import \
--connect jdbc:mysql://mysql.example.com/sqoop \
--username sqoop \
--table cities \
--password-file my-sqoop-password
Discussion
Let's take a deeper look at each available method. The first method, using the parameter
-P , will instruct Sqoop to prompt the user for the password before any other Sqoop
action is taken. An example prompt is shown below:
sqoop import -P --connect ...
Enter password:
You can type any characters into the prompt and then press the Enter key once you are
done. Sqoop will not echo any characters, preventing someone from reading the pass‐
word on your screen. All entered characters will be loaded and used as the password
(except for the final enter ). This method is very secure, as the password is not stored
anywhere and is loaded on every Sqoop execution directly from the user. The downside
is that it can't be easily automated with a script.
The second solution, using the parameter --password-file , will load the password
from any specified file on your HDFS cluster. In order for this method to be secure, you
need to store the file inside your home directory and set the file's permissions to 400 ,
so no one else can open the file and fetch the password. This method for securing your
password can be easily automated with a script and is the recommended option if you
need to securely automate your Sqoop workflow. You can use the following shell and
Hadoop commands to create and secure your password file:
echo "my-secret-password" > sqoop.password
hadoop dfs -put sqoop.password /user/ $USER /sqoop.password
hadoop dfs -chown 400 /user/ $USER /sqoop.password