[systemd-devel] crypto: to show stars or not to show them

[Graham Cantin]

+1 from me. I like the idea of being able to hide the password prompt, but
not by default.

It's one of those "Oh, someone is looking over my shoulder, I should hit
tab" things.

On a slightly different note; Would it be possible to watch for unprintable
keys?

For example, what about a single backspace/delete at the start of the
prompt, before you've entered anything?

I'm used to tab making things appear, not making things disappear.

On the other hand, I'm used to backspace/delete making things disappear; so
it feels more logical to me.

On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 5:41 PM, Lennart Poettering
<lennart at poettering.net>wrote:

> On Fri, 18.03.11 00:18, Jan Engelhardt (jengelh at medozas.de) wrote:
>
> > Meanwhile, I have two new suggestions.
>
> I have one too (or actually Kay came up with it), and I think you are
> going to like it:
>
> Start with showing input feedback as we currently do. If the user then
> presses TAB the stars disappear, and instead we show "(no echo)" or
> so. Then, the user can proceed with typing his password without
> asterisks.
>
> This should be strictly one way however: you can enter the no-echo mode
> but not leave it anymore. For two reasons: so that people cannot take
> over your machine and make visible what you explicitly wanted to hide:
> the length of your password. And secondly, there might be weird folks
> with Tabs in their passphrases (though they are probably going through
> hell if they do), and by pressing TAB twice they thus have a way to
> enter a single TAB.
>
> If you prep a patch for this logic I'd merge it right-away and I think
> both of us should be perfectly happy, right?
>
> Lennart
>
> --
> Lennart Poettering - Red Hat, Inc.
> _______________________________________________
> systemd-devel mailing list
> systemd-devel at lists.freedesktop.org
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
>



-- 
[     Graham Cantin      ] | (408) 890-7463 - Google Voice FindME
[   NASA Ames Research   ] | Building 19, Moffett Field, CA
"As living spies we must recruit men who are intelligent but appear
to be stupid; who seem to be dull but are strong in heart; men who are
agile, vigorous, hardy, and brave; well-versed in lowly matters and able
to endure hunger, cold, filth, and humiliation." - Tu Mu (803-825)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/systemd-devel/attachments/20110317/0c80f69b/attachment-0001.html>