Re: [Libvir] PATCH: 1/10: SASL authentication support

[Jim Meyering <jim meyering net>]

"Daniel P. Berrange" <berrange redhat com> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 29, 2007 at 02:43:09PM -0500, Daniel Veillard wrote:
...
>> I know, I have also argued against it (and that's why libxml2 doesn't
>> parse it), but this can be way more convenient at times, and also
>> has the potential to remove asynchronous interaction for example
>> when using scripts.
>
> There's better ways to deal with scripting. eg, we could add a flag to
> virsh  '--auth /path/to/file'  where the file contained key,value pairs
> for each credential. Or could have an env var VIR_AUTH_FILE pointing
> to such a file, which can be processed by the default callback I aded.
> That lets you automate login, without leaking the confidential data
> anywhere.

Or, you could do what gpg does and use a gpg-agent-style envvar
to specify socket and PID:

  GPG_AGENT_INFO=/path/to/socket:NNNNN:1

Then you'd use the path and pid used by your existing gpg-agent.

When I started gpg-signing things regularly, I switched from ssh-agent
to gpg-agent, and it takes care of auth for both gpg signing and
ssh connections.