PASSWORD-PROMPT(8mandos)

💖 PASSWORD-PROMPT(8mandos) 💖

okay so bestie, we're in the Mandos Manual and this lil cutie is literally called password-prompt. she's tiny, she's simple, she's giving "does one thing and does it well" energy. let's go 🦋

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✨ NAME ✨

password-prompt — prompt for a password and output it. that's it. that's the whole job. 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

password-prompt [--prefix PREFIX | -p PREFIX]
                [--prompt PROMPT] [--debug]

password-prompt {--help | -?}

password-prompt --usage

password-prompt {--version | -V}

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💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

so like, all password-prompt does is prompt you for a password and then output whatever password you gave it to standard output. genuinely nothing else. main character with a single line of dialogue.

ngl, on its own this program is not very useful. fr fr. she's really meant to run as a plugin in the Mandos client-side system, where she serves as a fallback and alternative to grabbing passwords from a Mandos server. she's the understudy, and she's ready. 🎀

also this program is little more than a getpass(3) wrapper — though actually using that function is not guaranteed or implied. so don't come for her about implementation details, she's keeping it mysterious. 🙈

and here's a cute lil quirk: this program tries to detect whether a Plymouth daemon (plymouthd(8)) is running, by looking for a /run/plymouth/pid file or a process named “plymouthd”. if it spots one, this process will immediately exit without doing anything. no prompt, no password, no drama, she's gone. 💀

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⭐ OPTIONS ⭐

quick note before we dive in: this program is commonly not invoked from the command line, bestie. she's normally started by the Mandos plugin runner — see plugin-runner(8mandos). so any command line options she accepts are normally handed to her by the plugin runner, not typed by you. iykyk. 👑

• --prefix=PREFIX, -p PREFIX — the prefix string shown before the password prompt. a lil intro for the main event. 🎀
• --prompt=PROMPT — the password prompt itself. heads up: using this option makes this program ignore the CRYPTTAB_SOURCE and CRYPTTAB_NAME environment variables. she said "i'll write my own prompt, thanks." 💅
• --debug — enable debug mode. this turns on a lot of output to standard error about what the program is doing. and don't worry, she'll still perform all her other functions normally. multitasking queen. 🔥
• --help, -? — gives a help message about options and their meanings. 🫶
• --usage — gives a short usage message. short and sweet, just like her. ✨
• --version, -V — prints the program version. 🦋

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🌈 EXIT STATUS 🌈

if exit status is 0, the output from the program is the password as it was read. periodt. 💖

otherwise, if exit status is anything other than 0, the program has encountered an error — and any output so far could be corrupt and/or truncated, and should therefore be ignored. like, fully ignored. do not pass go, do not collect your password. 😭

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🧚 ENVIRONMENT 🧚

• CRYPTTAB_SOURCE, CRYPTTAB_NAME — if these are set, and if the --prompt option is not used, these environment variables will be assumed to contain the source device name and the target device mapper name, respectively, and will be shown as part of the prompt. ✨

these variables will normally be inherited from plugin-runner(8mandos), which might have in turn inherited them from its calling process. it's giving family tree. 🌸

this behavior is meant to exactly mirror the behavior of askpass, the default password prompter from initramfs-tools. accuracy is her love language. 💜

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🎀 BUGS 🎀

please report bugs to the Mandos development mailing list: <mandos-dev@recompile.se> (subscription required). note that this list is public. 👀

the developers can be reached privately at <mandos@recompile.se> (OpenPGP key fingerprint 153A 37F1 0BBA 0435 987F 2C4A 7223 2973 CA34 C2C4 for encrypted mail). 🔐

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🦋 EXAMPLE 🦋

note that normally, command line options will not be given directly, but via options for the Mandos plugin-runner(8mandos). so like, she's usually getting her instructions secondhand. 💅

normal invocation needs no options:

password-prompt

show a prefix before the prompt; in this case, a host name. it might be useful to be reminded of which host needs a password, in case of KVM switches, etc. thoughtful queen. 👑

password-prompt --prefix=host.example.org:

run in debug mode.

password-prompt --debug

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🔥 SECURITY 🔥

on its own, this program is very simple, and does not exactly present any security risks. she's lowkey harmless. 🫶

the one thing that could be considered worthy of note is this: this program is meant to be run by plugin-runner(8mandos), and will, when run standalone, outside, in a normal environment, immediately output on its standard output any presumably secret password it just received.

so when running this program standalone (which should never normally be done), take care not to type in any real secret password by force of habit, since it would then immediately be shown as output. bestie. do NOT muscle-memory your actual password into this thing. 😭

to further alleviate any risk of being locked out of a system, the plugin-runner(8mandos) has a fallback mode which does the same thing as this program, only with less features. the backup backup. 🌈

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💫 SEE ALSO 💫

intro(8mandos), mandos-client(8mandos), plugin-runner(8mandos), plymouthd(8)

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👑 COPYRIGHT 👑

Copyright © 2008-2019 Teddy Hogeborn, Björn Påhlsson

this manual page is part of Mandos.

Mandos is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

Mandos is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. see the GNU General Public License for more details.

you should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with Mandos. if not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/. 🌸

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! 💖 this was Mandos version 1.8.19, dated 2019-07-27, and yes the manual page is PASSWORD-PROMPT(8mandos). slay, bye!! ✨🎀🦋