General

codesonar generate_hubpwfile.py: Interactively Generate a Hub Password File

The codesonar generate_hubpwfile.py command allows you to interactively generate a hub password file. Once generated, this file can be supplied with the -hubpwfile option to any codesonar subcommands that require hub authentication.

The expected use case for this command is in deploying CodeSonar in a containerized context. You can run codesonar generate_hubpwfile.py in a temporary container to obtain a password and store it to a persistent location.

Overview

The codesonar generate_hubpwfile.py command interactively prompts the user for a password, then stores this password in a specified file with owner-only permissions.

generate_hubpwfile.py is a codesonar Python subcommand.

Command Line

The general form of the command line is as follows.

codesonar generate_hubpwfile.py path/to/out_pwfile \
[--prompt "promptstring"] [--make-dirs] [--overwrite]
path/to/out_pwfile Write the provided password to the file at this location.
  • If the file already exists, fail unless --overwrite is specified.
  • If one or more of the directories in the specified path do not exist, fail unless --make-dirs or --overwrite is specified.
  • The file owner will be set to the system user who runs this command.
  • The file permissions will set to allow access only to the file owner.
[--prompt "promptstring"] Use the specified promptstring to interactively prompt the user for a password to store.
If not specified, the prompt will be "Password: ".
[--make-dirs] The command will create any directories in the specified path that do not already exist.
If not specified, behavior depends on whether or not --overwrite is specified.
  • --overwrite specified: the command will behave as if --make-dirs is also specified.
  • --overwrite not specified: the command will fail if any of the directories do not exist.
[--overwrite] Any existing file at path/to/out_pwfile will be overwritten.
If not specified, the command will fail if file path/to/out_pwfile already exists.

When --overwrite is specified, the command will behave as if --make-dirs is also specified.

Using codesonar generate_hubpwfile.py

The expected use case for this command is in deploying CodeSonar in a containerized context.

Suppose that:

Then the general technique is as follows.

  1. Determine a persistent location for storing the password file.
    For example, if you are using Docker then you can save the password file to a Docker volume.

    The remaining steps will refer to this location as /persistent/pathto/pwfname.

  2. Sign in to the container system as container_user.
  3. Use a temporary container to set up your credentials by running a codesonar generate_hubpwfile.py command like the following.
    codesonar generate_hubpwfile.py /persistent/pathto/pwfname --overwrite
    When you start this temporary container, enter the password for hub user alex when prompted. The password will be saved as the only contents of file /persistent/path_to/pwfname.
  4. In the container (or containers) where you are deploying CodeSonar, provide your generated password file whenever you need to authenticate a codesonar subcommand:
    -auth password -hubuser alex -hubpwfile /persistent/pathto/pwfname
    For example:
    codesonar analyze MyProject http://myhub.example.com:7340 \
    -auth password -hubuser alex -hubpwfile /persistent/pathto/pwfname \
    [... remainder of command]

Note: you will probably find it most convenient to store the /persistent/pathto/pwfname string in a variable and then refer to this variable in your various commands.