[Rd] secure password token management method in R

Barry Rowlingson b.rowlingson at lancaster.ac.uk
Sun Dec 18 15:03:07 CET 2011


On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 1:28 AM, Paul Gilbert <pgilbert902 at gmail.com> wrote:
> One way this is often done is to have this information in a file that only
> the owner can read. For example, mysql uses a file .my.cnf (in Windows it
> may have a different name). The code then just reads the information from
> the file. To guard against user carelessness, I think mysql will not use it
> if anyone other than the user has read permission on the file. Of the
> various options for passing user/password information, I think this is
> general considered one of the better ways.

 If anyone has a large chunk of spare time on their hands they could
implement an R interface to the Gnome Keyring and store credentials in
there.  I think under the hood it uses dbus so first implement dbus in
R. Or just call some code with system()...

 gnome keyring API: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeKeyring/StoringPasswords

 command line interface: https://launchpad.net/gkeyring

Probably getting a bit over the top now.

Barry



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