Re: [vox-tech] fetchmail and ssh

[jdnewmil@dcnMAPS.davis.ca.us]

On Tue, 13 Feb 2001, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:

> ok, i've been at this for awhile; time to get help.
> 
> i'm trying to get fetchmail to send my password securely.  this is what i've
> tried for .fetchmailrc:
> 
> poll belial.ucdavis.edu with protocol pop3 and port 11110:
> preconnect "ssh -f belial.ucdavis.edu -L 11110:belial.ucdavis.edu:110 
>belial.ucdavis.edu sleep 20"
> password XXXX;
> 
> and:
> 
> poll belial.ucdavis.edu via localhost port 1234 with proto pop3:
> preconnect "ssh -f -L 1234:belial.ucdavis.edu:110 belial.ucdavis.edu sleep 20 
></dev/null >/dev/null"
> password XXXX;
> 
> and a few variations on these two themes. i'm getting the same error message:
> 
> fetchmail: starting fetchmail 5.5.3 daemon
> fetchmail: 5.5.3 querying belial.ucdavis.edu (protocol POP3) at Tue Feb 13 01:09:20 
>2001
> You have no controlling tty.  Cannot read passphrase.
> fetchmail: pre-connection command failed with status 65280
> fetchmail: Query status=5 (SYNTAX)
> 
> i'm sure i have a few hurdles to jump here.  the first one is the no
> controlling tty one.   can someone help me out with this?

You must setup an authorization key that allows connections to belial
without entering any verification (i.e. have a private key with no
passphrase for root@dirac.org, have corresponding public key in
/home/p/.ssh/authorized_keys).  That should get rid of the complaint about
no controlling tty.

You probably also need to add a "-l p" (say, between the "-f" and "-L" to
go from user root@dirac.org to user p@belial.

> i was hoping the password XXXX; would save me from having to type in a
> password.

The password is to satisfy pop... notice that it is not part of the ssh
command.

> also, i feel ashamed to ask this, but what exactly is the difference between
> ssh, ssl and kerberos?

I am not exactly sure of the details, but from what I know ssh builds a
general purpose encrypted point-to-point tunnel using one protocol, ssl
does something similar with a different protocol, and kerberos is a system
of centralizing managment of security in a network.  ssh key managment is
pretty ad-hoc, ssl key management is pretty one-sided (using certifying
authorities like Verisign), and kerberos is for a large organization.

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