Commodity and Tooltypes

Commodity and Tooltypes

AmiAuthGUI is a proper AmigaOS Commodity: it runs resident in the background, appears in Exchange, pops up on a hotkey, and is single-instance. This is the recommended way to run it — you unlock the vault once, and it stays available all session, to both the hotkey and the Shell CLI.

Behaviour as a commodity

• Hotkey (default Ctrl-Alt-A): if the window is hidden, it opens; if it's already open, it comes to the front and activates.
• Closing the window hides it — the process stays resident and the vault stays unlocked. Bring it back with the hotkey, Exchange's Show, or AmiAuth SHOW from a Shell. It reopens at the same position and size you last left it (this session — not saved across a full restart).
• Quitting for real is Project → Quit (or Exchange's Kill, or removing it in Exchange). Key material is zeroed on the way out.
• Single instance: launching AmiAuthGUI a second time doesn't start a second copy or re-prompt for the passphrase — it just tells the running instance to show its window.
• Exchange lists it as "AmiAuth" ("TOTP/HOTP authenticator") and all the standard messages work: Show / Hide / Enable / Disable (the hotkey) / Kill.
• CLI forwarding: while resident, the Shell AmiAuth command sends GET, LIST, ADD, REMOVE and SHOW to the running GUI instead of opening the vault itself — no second passphrase prompt. See CLI Reference.

Without commodities.library (a bare OS install), AmiAuthGUI degrades to a plain application window: no hotkey or Exchange entry, and closing the window quits. It's still single-instance — a second launch exits immediately without prompting for a passphrase — but unlike the commodity case above, it does not bring the running instance's window to the front; you'll need to switch to it yourself.

Tooltypes

Set these in the icon's Information window (Workbench: select the icon, then Icons → Information). The CX_ tooltypes are the standard commodity set.

Tooltype	Default	Meaning
CX_POPKEY	ctrl alt a	The hotkey that shows/raises the window. Standard commodities hotkey syntax: qualifiers (ctrl, alt, shift, lcommand, …) followed by a key, e.g. CX_POPKEY=lcommand a.
CX_POPUP	yes	no = start hidden: the commodity loads silently and the window first opens on the hotkey (or Exchange Show). The right choice for WBStartup.
CX_PRIORITY	0	Commodity broker priority — the order commodities see input. Rarely needs changing.
TIMESERVER	(saved server pref, else pool.ntp.org)	SNTP server for the automatic time sync the GUI performs at startup. On success the measured offset (and this server) are saved; offline the sync fails quietly. See Time and Clock Sync.
PUBSCREEN	(the default public screen)	Open on the named public screen instead — e.g. a custom screen another program opened. Falls back to the default public screen automatically if the named one isn't open when AmiAuth starts.
DONOTWAIT	—	Not read by AmiAuth itself: tells Workbench not to wait for the program to exit. Set it on any WBStartup icon.

The CX_* names, and TIMESERVER/PUBSCREEN, also work as Shell arguments when starting the GUI from a script (Run >NIL: AmiAuthGUI CX_POPUP=no).

There is no VAULT tooltype: the GUI finds its vault via the AMIAUTH_VAULT environment variable, the path saved in ENVARC:AmiAuth/vault at first run, or the PROGDIR:AmiAuth.vault default — see Vault and Passphrases.

A WBStartup icon that works

Any of these give you AmiAuth at boot (details in Installation):

• a project icon in WBStartup pointing at AmiAuthGUI in its drawer (the tidiest shape);
• a Run >NIL: …/AmiAuthGUI line in S:User-Startup;
• the classic copy of the executable (+ icon) into WBStartup — fine too, as long as the vault already exists (its absolute path is recorded in the settings at creation, so a WBStartup copy finds it; just don't let a first-ever launch create the vault in WBStartup).

Suggested tooltypes:

CX_POPKEY=ctrl alt a
CX_POPUP=no
DONOTWAIT

With CX_POPUP=no the boot is silent in both modes. An always-unlocked vault opens immediately, so Ctrl-Alt-A summons your codes instantly. An encrypted vault stays resident but locked: the passphrase prompt appears the first time you summon the window (hotkey, Exchange Show, or AmiAuth SHOW) — once per session, at a moment of your choosing rather than mid-boot. Cancelling the prompt just re-hides it, still locked; until unlocked, forwarded CLI commands report that the vault is locked. (A first launch with no vault at all defers its welcome/creation dialog the same way.)

Choosing a hotkey

ctrl alt a is chosen to be unlikely to clash. If it does clash (some terminal programs and other commodities grab similar combinations), pick another with CX_POPKEY — Exchange will show AmiAuth's current hotkey in its information view. If two commodities claim the same hotkey, the one with the higher CX_PRIORITY gets it.