I am setting up slrn for the first time. I noticed that slrnrc stores
NNTP credentials in plain text. That's not ideal. I'd like to store my
credentials in an external password manager, such as `pass`[^1].

Is it possible to do one of two things:

1. Call an external program that provides the username and password to
nnrpaccess at runtime?
2. Or, reference a file external to slrnrc that contains the
credentials?

Option #2 is still not perfect, but at least I can lock down the
credentials themselves separate from the configuration file.

[^1]: <https://www.passwordstore.org/>

--
Profoundly Nerdy

Profoundly Nerdy <profoundlynerdy@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> I am setting up slrn for the first time. I noticed that slrnrc stores
> NNTP credentials in plain text. That's not ideal. I'd like to store my
> credentials in an external password manager, such as `pass`[^1].
>
> Is it possible to do one of two things:
>
> 1. Call an external program that provides the username and password to
> nnrpaccess at runtime?

Anything is possible if you want to write the code for it. If you
can write it in S-Lang, you can interpret any file from your .slrnrc.
I suspect the limitation here will be your password manager.

> 2. Or, reference a file external to slrnrc that contains the
> credentials?

That part is trivial. You can include any other config file in
your main config file.

https://www.slrn.org/docs/slrn-manual-5.html#include

Phil
--
AH#61 Wolf#14 BS#89 bus#1 CCB#1 SENS KOTC#4
philb@philb.ca http://philb.ca

On 2023-11-04, Profoundly Nerdy <profoundlynerdy@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> I am setting up slrn for the first time. I noticed that slrnrc stores
> NNTP credentials in plain text. That's not ideal. I'd like to store my
> credentials in an external password manager, such as `pass`[^1].
>
> Is it possible to do one of two things:
>
> 1. Call an external program that provides the username and password to
> nnrpaccess at runtime?
> 2. Or, reference a file external to slrnrc that contains the
> credentials?
>
> Option #2 is still not perfect, but at least I can lock down the
> credentials themselves separate from the configuration file.
>
> [^1]: <https://www.passwordstore.org/>
>

I agree 100% is why I asked the community to support new software
that takes privacy and security as a main concern, never have plain text
passwors in your ENV or home directory anyone working in infosec knows this
old software lacks this way of thinking .

I know 2-3 projects that devs dropped it or are about because
nobody helps them with QA and testing and all this projects support
calling password managers like pass/gopass/bitwarden-cli etc from the config
file, supports encryption and such, but their support for usenet is 50%
because of lack influence

Happy Hacking

ReK2
> --
> Profoundly Nerdy

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