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Re: how can I change my password by SVN client?

From: Nico Kadel-Garcia <nkadel_at_gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 2009 19:57:30 -0400

2009/8/31 David Weintraub <qazwart_at_gmail.com>:
> Subversion doesn't have its own native security. This is actually a better
> way because it allows you to use external security regimens.
>
> For example, we use LDAP and connect to our Active Server via Apache. Now, I
> don't have to worry about settiing up users independently. If a user is in
> the Windows server's engineering group, they automatically have access to
> Subversion without me doing anything. Once they leave, they have no more
> access.
>
> Even better, their Subversion password is the same as their Windows
> password. No more forgetting their password.
>
> If I use ssh+svn://, the operating system handles logging in and out. My
> name and password is the same as my Unix account.

What? No-no-no-no-no. This is used by some, but the far safer and more
useful way to do is to designate an svn user, who's
$HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys file This relies on SSH keys, not
passwords, which allows single-sign-on style user access by having an
ssh-agent (or a Gnome or KDE "wallet", which is out of band of
Subversion's key storage).

No user passwords. None. Nyet. Nil. Nein. Nada. A user selected
password is normally used to unlock the relevant SSH key, and a Gnome
or KDE wallet can manage that. And this way, the repository URL's look
ile 'svn+ssh://svn@reposerver/var/lib/svn/repository', or a similar
structure. This allows user login to that server to be quite distinct
and even unnecessary. This is the approach that Sourceforge uses, for
example. The public SSH key in is set to designate the relevant
Subversion user based on which key is used. It's a very handy
approach, and avoids the security issues that I tend to rant about, at
the cost of some setup time.

It does take some setting up, but it's reasonably well-described in
the FAQ. What's missing for it is a graceful user tool for managing
the SSH passphrases for that single central user.

> There is no reason why the Subversion administrator cannot setup a way for
> users to maintain their own passwords.Unfortunately, without knowing your
> setup, I can't advice you how this could be done.

See above. Git has a friendly little tool for this called 'gitosis',
and also has a restricted shell precisely for SSH access (rather than
the more confusing but workable port forwarding to an svnserve
instance that svn+ssh uses)

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Received on 2009-09-01 01:58:30 CEST

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