• you can't feed the script a password
• you can't feed the script a RSA/DSA key passphrase

That's not a big deal, because, as I pointed out elsewhere, storing plaintext passwords and/or passphrases in a script or config file is at best unwise.

You can use RSA/DSA keys, though, and afaik you can use custom keys (for your cron jobs). But anyways you should restrict the commands allowed on the target system for that keys with the command="someprogram" option in the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file. See sshd(8) for more details.

--shmem

_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}