[cvsnt] In an authentication pickle

[Joelle Tegwen]

David Somers wrote:
> You really don't want (l)users running a shell on a Windows server... that's
> something only a sys admin would want to do (and these days they'd probably
> be better off using RDP when they need to play with the server).

We do remote in for administration, but we use dreamweaver and cvs to do 
website management. (I instigated the cvs - that's why I have to figure 
all of this out.)  Vshell is just a ssh server for windows, like openSSh 
only not (because they couldn't get openssh to work - before my time). 
Does that answer what you were talking about or is this part of "do you 
really need a secure protocol?"

>>I'm sure this is a really basic thing. I just am completely in over my
>>head.
> 
> 
> Authentication and protocol security are different things. Pick up a copy of
> Applied Cryptography (2nd Edition) by Bruce Schneier for all the nasty
> details.

So noted.


> One question that springs to mind is: do you really need secure
> authentication and a secure protocol? Then again, from your domain I guess
> you are operating in a academic environment, so beware students with packet
> sniffers :-))

Yeah, we're a tiny department at the U of MN. It never occurred to me 
that we should not use a secure protocol. All the sites I read just said 
don't use them. *shrugs* I'm also thinking that these are all good 
things for me to learn how to do.


> BTW, you said in an earlier post that you're using MacCvsX (3.2-beta14)...
> good grief, its years old... its from 2002!
> 
> Use a newer build! The last one (from 2003!) at least says it supports
> cvsgui, so it should offer sspi, pserver, and sserver...  so just run it
> using sspi. You'd probably want to drop the cvsnt that comes with it and
> use a newer version.
> 
The reason I wasn't using the earlier build was that it said it was 
still in Alpha testing and one of my mac users (who just happens to be 
my boss) is mostly non-technical, so a major software glitch would be a 
problem. I asked on the WinCVS list if it was stable but only got 
responses telling me that there were other options besides cvs. (or so 
it seemed to me)

If someone can vouch for it not crashing on my boss, then I'll have her 
use that. :)

Thanks tons!
Joelle