iTMSTransporter fails with error -20101 - ios

Question

I've received an email from Apple yesterday stating that it's now possible to deliver App Store metadata localizations using a command-line tool called Transporter.
I've downloaded iTunes_Store_Transporter_Quick_Start_Guide_v2.pdf from iTunes Connect and followed the example for a simple lookup of the metadata of an app:
To initiate lookup mode, use the following command:
$ iTMSTransporter -m lookupMetadata -u [iTunes Connect user name]
-p [iTunes Connect password] -vendor_id [App SKU]
-destination [destination path for App Store Package]
However, although my login credentials and all other informations entered are correct, I always receive the following error:
[2013-07-19 14:34:40 MESZ] <main> DBG-X: parameter Errors = [Directory Services reported the following error: Your Apple ID or password was entered incorrectly. (-20101)]
[2013-07-19 14:34:40 MESZ] <main> ERROR: Apple's web service operation was not successful
[2013-07-19 14:34:40 MESZ] <main> ERROR: An error occurred while looking up the metadata.
[2013-07-19 14:34:40 MESZ] <main> ERROR: Directory Services reported the following error: Your Apple ID or password was entered incorrectly. (-20101)
[2013-07-19 14:34:40 MESZ] <main> DBG-X: The error code is: -20101
INFOS: My password contains special characters. Thus I've tried to pass the password with and without quotation marks.

Answer 1

#Tafkadasoh It's the dollar sign that's causing the problem. Since the $ character is reserved for different kind of variables in unix, you have to escape it.
Instead of
-p 'Pass$123'
Use
-p 'Pass\$123'

Answer 2

What OS are you using and what are the special characters that your password contains? If you're using OS X try it with single quotes, e.g. 'password' not "password".
If you're going to be using iTMSTransporter a lot I would recommend
using this program.

Answer 3

As a workaround, it worked for me to remove the password parameter. iTMSTransporter will then ask for password entry on the command-line. This isn't a real solution, as you can't use this for automated scripts (for which iTMSTransporter is intended to use for). For infrequent use however, this might be enough.

Answer 4

#Tafkadasoh - that workaround worked great for me too, I can now connect and grab the metadata package.
Cheers!

Answer 5

For me, I had FASTLANE_APPLE_APPLICATION_SPECIFIC_PASSWORD and FASTLANE_PASSWORD in my environment variables. So I remove FASTLANE_APPLE_APPLICATION_SPECIFIC_PASSWORD and it worked.
If you have FASTLANE_SESSION along with FASTLANE_PASSWORD, you may need to remove FASTLANE_SESSION.