Doorman SSH Connection Utility

Doorman is a utility that allows a single SSH connection to be used for multiple operations without requiring re-authentication. This is primarily useful with Subversion and CVS tunneling over SSH, but could be used for other things as well.

The functionality doorman provides can be achieved using key based authentication with SSH. For applications where key based authentication is unavailable or undesirable, doorman allows for single password entry without the security issues associated with tools that write passwords to persistent storage. In particular, security practices are difficult to manage with key based authentication in corporate environments. Using password authentication in corporate environments can allow use of existing authentication mechanisms via LDAP, Active Directory, etc..

Examples:
(Windows platform. Unix examples would be similar.)

Without doorman.

set CVS_RSH=plink
cvs -d :ext:anyserver.com:/cvs co -d anyfolder anyproject
(enter password)
cd anyfolder
cvs up -d -P
(enter password)

With doorman.

Cmd prompt 1:

doorman -i anyserver.com plink anyserver.com doorman -s
(enter password)

Cmd prompt 2:

set CVS_RSH=doorman
cvs -d :ext:anyserver.com:/cvs co -d anyfolder anyproject

cd anyfolder

cvs -d :ext:anyserver.com:/cvs co -d anyfolder anyproject

Copyright © 2005-2010 Joe Lowe