Remember Private Key

[zhdenny]

Is there a way to have sshwifty remember the private key for a SSH connection?

Currently, it appears I need to re-enter my Private RSA Key every single time I want to connect to a specific host. Kind of a pain.

Thanks.

[nirui]

Sorry, currently there is no way for Sshwifty to remember private credentials.

The function was implemented, but eventually removed because I've failed to found a way to safely save private credentials inside web browser (localStorage).

How about this: I'll change the input box (which is a HTML textarea currently) to a File selector, so you can directly select the private key file instead of having to manually re-enter it. Though, you still have to decrypt the key file before hand, and then select the decrypted key every single time when you try to login.

What do you think?

[zhdenny]

Yes, please. That would make me much happier.

Thank you sir!

[zhdenny]

Random question...but does Guacamole save private credentials safely? If they do, wonder if you could adopt their approach.

[nirui]

I have no information about Guacamole because I don't use the software :(. But I'll look into it, thanks for the pointer.

For now:

I've added the feature described above (Change textarea to <input type="file" /> ).

In addition to that, credentials will now be saved in memory (in a JavaScript variable that is), so you only need to re-enter them once every time the webpage is reloaded.

It only works if you connect by clicking items of the "Known remotes" list. Otherwise you still have to re-enter everything.

Also, a reminder: You need to clear the page cache (By clicking the Refresh button of your web browser) to use the new client application.

[nirui]

@zhdenny Hey, uh just letting you know, I've looked Guacamole. Seems to me that they are saving the credential into database in plain-text. At least when MySQL is used as storage backend.

mysql> use guacamole_db;
Database changed
mysql> SELECT * FROM guacamole_connection;
+---------------+-----------------+-----------+----------+------------+----------------+-------------------------+-----------------+--------------------------+-------------------+---------------+
| connection_id | connection_name | parent_id | protocol | proxy_port | proxy_hostname | proxy_encryption_method | max_connections | max_connections_per_user | connection_weight | failover_only |
+---------------+-----------------+-----------+----------+------------+----------------+-------------------------+-----------------+--------------------------+-------------------+---------------+
|             1 | router          |      NULL | ssh      |       NULL | NULL           | NULL                    |            NULL |                     NULL |              NULL |             0 |
+---------------+-----------------+-----------+----------+------------+----------------+-------------------------+-----------------+--------------------------+-------------------+---------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT * FROM guacamole_connection_parameter;
+---------------+----------------+-----------------+
| connection_id | parameter_name | parameter_value |
+---------------+----------------+-----------------+
|             1 | enable-sftp    | true            |
|             1 | hostname       | <Masked>        |
|             1 | password       | router_password |
|             1 | port           | 22              |
|             1 | username       | root            |
+---------------+----------------+-----------------+
5 rows in set (0.01 sec)

mysql> 

It's not very ideal for us since Guacamole is been developed for a different purpose than Sshwifty. Also, we don't use storage backend (We're saving address book directly in the client web browser with window.localStorage).