Standardize key management for bnscli

[ruseinov]

There are several ways to store keys in strings, some of them are in use in IOV

1. Base64
2. Hex

Currently there is no standard way to deal with this when working with bnscli.

In order to simplify this process I would propose 2 solutions:

1. Support base64 and hex-encoded strings in any command that requires a key, not just the keyfile
2. Implement helper commands to save a base64/hex-encoded string as decoded raw-bytes, similar to keygen.

Ideally I would have both of these solutions implemented for convenience.

[ethanfrey]

In Linux there is a cli tool, I think

Echo $key | base64 - d > keyfile

[ruseinov]

@ethanfrey It's not a base64 issue, but rather decoding a hex string and writing it to a file.
That's probably because we should store base64 instead of hex..

[husio]

I am using a custom program to deal with hex values https://gist.github.com/husio/0508ad24aa52a8f95684a1a86f33e1cb

echo $key | hexit -d > keyfile

[ethanfrey]

We use this in iov-core scripts:

echo -n 1234 | xxd -r -p - | xxd -p -c 9999

xxd -r -p - will convert raw hex to binary
xxd -p -c 9999 will convert to raw hex (with 9999 character lines, so we get no newlines)

Example to do what you want I believe (hex to base64):

$ echo -n 00CAFE00 | xxd -r -p - | base64
AMr+AA==

$ echo -n AMr+AA== | base64 -d | xxd -p -c 999
00cafe00

[ruseinov]

Yeah, I have already added the xxd bit to the wiki as it seems to work fine. Will close this for now as everybody stores their test private keys differently.

[ethanfrey]

Will close this for now as everybody stores their test private keys differently

We really need a standard key management for any production bnscli tool

[ruseinov]

@ethanfrey I will reopen then an formulate the ticket differently.

[ethanfrey]

Closing in favor of #856 and #855 for a much deeper overhaul of key management functionality