3.2 Generating authentication keys

Loadable Function: parallel_generate_srp_data (username)

Loadable Function: parallel_generate_srp_data (username, options)

Prompts for a password (press enter for a random password) and writes TLS-SRP authentication files into the directory given by:

fullfile (a = pkg ("prefix"), "parallel-srp-data")

Server files are placed in subdirectory server. By default, a client authentication file is placed in subdirectory client. The latter contains the given username and the cleartext password. You do not need this file if you prefer to be prompted for username and password at connection time. In this case, you can prevent the client authentication file from being written by passing as the argument options a structure with a value of false in the field unattended.

For authentication, subdir server, and possibly subdir client, have to be placed together with their contents at the respective machines (but see "Notes" below). They can either be placed under the directory given by:

fullfile (OCTAVE_HOME (), "share", "octave", "parallel-srp-data")

or – which might be the same directory – under:

fullfile (a = pkg ("prefix"), "parallel-srp-data")

Files in the former directory will take precedence over those in the latter. The contents of the files passwd and user_passwd (if present) must be kept secret.

Notes: One of the two server files is named "passwd". It contains one line per user – the line starts with the username and a ":". If this file pre-exists, the new line will be appended to it. You may have to manually merge this file with a potentially pre-existing file at the server machine, e.g. if you want to add a new user there. Also, you have to manually assure that in the version of this file at the server machine each username appears only once (i.e. old lines for the same user may have to be deleted). The username is arbitrary.

This function zeroizes sensitive data before releasing its memory. Due to usage of external libraries, however, it still can’t be excluded that sensitive data is still on the swap device after application shutdown.

See also: pconnect, pserver, reval, psend, precv, sclose, select_sockets.