Re: [Monotone-devel] monotone-server: empty passphrase from get_passphrase

[Matthew A. Nicholson]

Richard Levitte - VMS Whacker wrote:
> False trail!

Yeah that code is just to pull the password out of the 
/etc/monotone/passphrases file (we don't store it in debconf cause that 
is not safe).

> The error is in monotone-server.config.  For reconfigure, it happily
> gets the same input as for configure, and then saves whatever the user
> gave, and does NOT regenerate a new passphrase if the user just
> pressed Enter...
>
> Matthew, what was the intention here?  It does look faulty to me, one
> way or another.

Hmmm... that code seems strange.  If you think it should generate a 
password then just add a check for a blank password and generate one if 
necessary:

db_get monotone-server/passphrase
MTN_KEY_PASSWD="$RET"
if [ -z "$MTN_KEY_PASSWD" ]; then
   gen_pass
   MTN_KEY_PASSWD="$PASS"
fi

The problem is if we are managing the database and we generated the keys 
in the beginning, then the user should not be able to change the 
password (cause we don't update the keys, although we could I guess). 
If the user wants us to manage his database then he should enter a 
proper password for his key.

That is the basic reasoning behind the way it works now.  We don't 
generate a key there so we should not generate a random password for it. 
 Perhaps we should not allow a blank password either.

Let me know if that's not clear, it's late and I am sleepy :).

--
Matthew A. Nicholson
matt-land.com