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publishing to RAM from a jazz build engine ant script


John Kelly (1231715) | asked Jan 25 '12, 5:23 p.m.
i'm publishing to RAM using the ant tasks from within a jazz build engine. the build engine allows to to save the RTC password in a password file, but it seems like i have to pass the ram userid/password in the clear - is it possible somehow to obfuscate the ram password ?? ideally i'd like to be able to use the same password in the RTC passwordFile

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Colin Thorne commented Jun 05 '14, 11:53 a.m. | edited Jun 05 '14, 11:53 a.m.

Is there a new answer to this for the latest versions of RAM? I have downloaded the ramclient.zip from a RAM 7.5.2 server and in the example scripts I see that you can specify a password file in the ant task. The example shows a passwordfile option being passed in a password element in a server task.


<ram:password id="pwf" passwordfile="${ram.user.passwd.file}"/>

However, I still cannot get it to work, and the RAM product documentation doesn't seem to match the example.



John Kelly commented Jun 06 '14, 5:15 a.m.

 i wrote my own Secure Token Provider Ant Task to solve the issue. Have forwarded it to you...

6 answers



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Rich Kulp (3.6k38) | answered Jan 25 '12, 8:38 p.m.
FORUM MODERATOR / JAZZ DEVELOPER
On 1/25/2012 5:38 PM, jkelly wrote:
i'm publishing to RAM using the ant tasks from within a jazz build
engine. the build engine allows to to save the RTC password in a
password file, but it seems like i have to pass the ram
userid/password in the clear - is it possible somehow to obfuscate
the ram password ?? ideally i'd like to be able to use the same
password in the RTC passwordFile

What makes you think it is in the clear? The ANT task requires the

userid and password but you would read these from your local password
file that is only accessible to the ANT process. Also make sure you use
HTTPS for your server connections. In that case the password is
protected when passed to the server. It is only in the &quot;clear&quot; inside
the ANT process itself and nowhere else.

--
Rich Kulp
Rational Asset Manager developer

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John Kelly (1231715) | answered Jan 26 '12, 4:21 a.m.
On 1/25/2012 5:38 PM, jkelly wrote:
i'm publishing to RAM using the ant tasks from within a jazz build
engine. the build engine allows to to save the RTC password in a
password file, but it seems like i have to pass the ram
userid/password in the clear - is it possible somehow to obfuscate
the ram password ?? ideally i'd like to be able to use the same
password in the RTC passwordFile

What makes you think it is in the clear? The ANT task requires the

userid and password but you would read these from your local password
file that is only accessible to the ANT process. Also make sure you use
HTTPS for your server connections. In that case the password is
protected when passed to the server. It is only in the &quot;clear&quot; inside
the ANT process itself and nowhere else.

--
Rich Kulp
Rational Asset Manager developer

What I meant by &quot;in the clear&quot; is that a properties file is in a readable format, so can be inspected by anyone who has access to the build machine (few, but typically more than should know the password). Ideally ram:server would have a passwordFile attribute, so the whole end-to-end process could be consistently secure.

So all I was saying was I consider the RAM/Ant task method to be less secure than the facilities provided by RTC/Ant tasks. compare

&lt;startBuildActivity activityIdProperty=&quot;${actId}&quot; label=&quot;${actId}&quot; buildResultUUID=&quot;${buildResultUUID}&quot; repositoryAddress=&quot;${repositoryAddress}&quot; autocomplete=&quot;true&quot; userId=&quot;${userId}&quot; passwordFile=&quot;${passwordFile}&quot; /&gt;

with

&lt;ram:server id=&quot;ramServer&quot; username=&quot;${ram.user.id}&quot; password=&quot;${ram.user.passwd}&quot; url=&quot;${ram.url}&quot; /&gt;

----------------------

It was in this context where i was looking for a solution which didn't mean leaving passwords in clear text on the build machine.

regards
John

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Carlos Ferreira (91123) | answered Jan 26 '12, 2:58 p.m.
JAZZ DEVELOPER
Just an FYI in case others are also looking for more info on using ANT with RAM. I did a Youtube video tutorial series on this topic. http://rationalassetmanager.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/scripts-to-automate-asset-use-and-creation/

Carlos

Systems and Software Engineering Jumpstart

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Gili Mendel (1.8k56) | answered Jan 27 '12, 10:59 a.m.
JAZZ DEVELOPER
I assume the you can dynamically provide a &quot;decryption&quot; password to decrypt the properties files with the various passwords on them.

Consider http://www.jasypt.org/encrypting-configuration.html

There are many way to incorporate this in Ant e.g., the last append here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3423135/how-to-use-encrypted-password-in-apache-basicdatasource

permanent link
John Kelly (1231715) | answered Jan 29 '12, 12:15 p.m.
Just an FYI in case others are also looking for more info on using ANT with RAM. I did a Youtube video tutorial series on this topic. http://rationalassetmanager.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/scripts-to-automate-asset-use-and-creation/

Carlos

Systems and Software Engineering Jumpstart


Hi Carlos - Thanks for the link... wish I'd had that some days ago :-)

As it happens i've also written a blog entry on this &quot;Simplifying publication to Rational Asset Manager using Ant's macrodef&quot;
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/greenelk/entry/simplifying_publication_to_rational_asset_manager_using_ant_s_macrodef?lang=en

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John Kelly (1231715) | answered Jan 29 '12, 12:17 p.m.
I assume the you can dynamically provide a &quot;decryption&quot; password to decrypt the properties files with the various passwords on them.

Consider http://www.jasypt.org/encrypting-configuration.html

There are many way to incorporate this in Ant e.g., the last append here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3423135/how-to-use-encrypted-password-in-apache-basicdatasource


thanks for that. In fact i ended up writing my own ant tasks to solve this

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