Re: [Monotone-devel] Keystore usability -- passphraseless keys, etc.

[Nathaniel Smith]

On Tue, Feb 20, 2007 at 11:59:11AM +1100, Daniel Carosone wrote:
> At least one concern: what happens when a user changes from/to a
> NO-PASSPHRASE key?  We risk leaving a NOPASSPHRASE copy lying around
> after they expressed an intention to protect their key, or we risk
> confusion by reading two different files with the same private key.

Ah, I'm already assuming we have to maintain some sort of mapping from
filenames to the keys contained in them, since there's no way we can
stop people from just rearranging their keys/ directory already... so
the answer is "when you rewrite a key (e.g., in chkeypass), you remove
the file it used to be in -- whatever its name -- and write a new file
under the name you want now".  (Interesting puzzle: can/should this be
done atomically, so an inopportune crash cannot lose the private key
entirely?)

> Perhaps it's more useful to keep the filenames the same as now, but
> display this extra information in "ls keys".  Or do both?

Yeah, this seems potentially good, but orthogonal, to me.  ls keys is
not the interface you are using at the time you risk exposing your
key.

-- Nathaniel

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