[Libvir] Use of getpass

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Thu, Dec 06, 2007 at 02:36:04PM +0000, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 06, 2007 at 02:28:58PM +0000, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> > We recently added a call to getpass(3) function.  Needless to say this 
> > doesn't exist on Windows.  More seriously the man-page for getpass on 
> > Linux has strong exhortations not to use the function.
> > 
> > NAME
> >        getpass - get a password
> > 
> > SYNOPSIS
> >        #include <unistd.h>
> > 
> >        char *getpass( const char * prompt );
> > 
> > DESCRIPTION
> >        This function is obsolete.  Do not use it.
> > 
> >        The  getpass() function opens /dev/tty (the controlling terminal 
> > of the
> >        process), outputs the string prompt, turns off echoing, reads 
> > one  line
> >        (the  "password"),  restores  the  terminal  state  and closes 
> > /dev/tty
> >        again.
> > [...]
> > CONFORMING TO
> >        Present in SUSv2, but marked LEGACY.  Removed in POSIX.1-2001.
> > 
> > Should we remove it?  Replace it?
> 
> I'm open to suggestions? I'm not aware of any 'easy' functions to do
> the same thing. Could write a whole tonne of sick code which uses the
> tcgetattr/tcsetattr() apis to turn off echoing on stdin, but getpass
> was simpler. Maybe gnulib has something we can use ?

And looking at the glibc source, this is basically what gepass() does.
It opens /dev/tty, uses tcgetattr/tcsetattr to turn off echo, reads a
single line and then cleans up restoring echo and closing /dev/tty.

Dan.
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