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Top Forums Programming Encrypting/Decrypting passwords Post 302803405 by mdrisser on Monday 6th of May 2013 04:20:19 PM
Old 05-06-2013
Question Encrypting/Decrypting passwords

I know that simply encrypting and decrypting passwords in a script is as bad as storing them in plain text, but I've been searching for an answer to this for a few days now, and haven't found an answer that fits the problem I'm having.

Here's the scenario. I'll give more details than I think may be relevant, just in case...

I have a VMware Management Assistant machine running SuSE Enterprise 11, which in turn is talking to an APC UPS. When the UPS goes to battery power it is set to run a script that will gracefully shutdown the VMware virtual machines running on an ESXi cluster. In order to do this the script needs to be able to automatically login to the ESXi machines using a local (to the ESXi machines) username/password combo.

I've written the script to handle the shutdowns in Perl using VMware's API, but the username/password issue has me stumped. Prompting for a password won't work as I need it to run automatically (what happens if the power goes out and no one is around to enter the password?).

I'm at quite a loss as to how to handle this situation. I know I could hash the password using something like Authen::Passphrase::BlowfishCrypt, but how would I then pass it to the ESXi host for the login? Am I maybe approaching this whole thing from the wrong direction, or is there a solution that I'm just not seeing?

Thanks in advance for your help.
 

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UPSCMD(8)							    NUT Manual								 UPSCMD(8)

NAME
upscmd - UPS administration program for instant commands SYNOPSIS
upscmd -h upscmd -l ups upscmd [-u username] [-p password] ups command DESCRIPTION
upscmd allows you to invoke "instant commands" in your UPS hardware. Not all hardware supports this, so check the list with -l to see if anything will work on your equipment. On hardware that supports it, you can use this program to start and stop battery tests, invoke a front panel test (beep!), turn the load on or off, and more. OPTIONS
-h Display the help message. -l ups Show the list of supported instant commands on that UPS. Some hardware may not support any of them. -u username Set the username for the connection to the server. This is optional, and you will be prompted for this when invoking a command if -u is not used. -p password Set the password to authenticate to the server. This is also optional like -u, and you will be prompted for it if necessary. ups Connect to this UPS. The format is upsname[@hostname[:port]]. The default hostname is "localhost". UNATTENDED MODE
If you run this program inside a shell script or similar to invoke a command, you will need to specify all of the information on the command line. This means using -u and -p. Otherwise it will put up a prompt and your program will hang. This is not necessary when displaying the list, as the username and password are not required for read-only mode. DANGEROUS COMMANDS
Some drivers like apcsmart(8) have built-in paranoia for the dangerous commands like load.off. To make them actually turn off the load, you will have to send the command twice within a short window. That is, you will have to send it once, then send it again after 3 seconds elapse but before 15 seconds pass. This paranoia is entirely defined within the driver. upsd and upscmd have no control over the timing. DIAGNOSTICS
upscmd won't work unless you provide a valid username and password. If you get "access denied" errors, make sure that your upsd.users(5) has an entry for you, and that the username you are using has permissions to SET variables. BUGS
There is currently no way to tell the user when the driver requires confirmation to invoke a command such as load.off. Similarly, there is not yet a way to tell the user if a command succeeds or fails. This is on the list of things to fix in the future, so don't despair. It involves magic cookies. SEE ALSO
upsd(8), upsrw(8) INTERNET RESOURCES
The NUT (Network UPS Tools) home page: http://www.networkupstools.org/ Network UPS Tools 05/21/2012 UPSCMD(8)
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