Proxmox bash history

ipoluda

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Dec 22, 2020
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Hello! On my ProxMox server there are several Windows virtual machines that are encrypted with standard BitLocker tools. Every time I restart the server or any virtual machine, I need to enter the decryption password. In order not to connect to the virtual machine console via VNC/Spice every time, I use SSH and the command like "qm sendkey 100 p-a-s-s-ret" (where "100" is VM number and "p-a-s-s-ret" are sended keys to the VM) to send the decryption password to a specific virtual machine. Thus, my password is passed in cleartext in the command. In Linux like Ubuntu, all commands sent via SSH are written to the ".bash_history" file. After checking it, I did not see my command there, but there is a suspicion that the commands with my password may be written to some other bash_history file. Is it so? Or is ProxMox not recording commands sent to QEMU?
 
hi,

Thus, my password is passed in cleartext in the command. In Linux like Ubuntu, all commands sent via SSH are written to the ".bash_history" file. After checking it, I did not see my command there, but there is a suspicion that the commands with my password may be written to some other bash_history file. Is it so? Or is ProxMox not recording commands sent to QEMU?
no it's saved. sometimes you need to logout/login for bash to write the history file. have you tried that?

you could write this command into a script and execute that instead. that way the password won't show up in .bash_history.
 
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you could write this command into a script and execute that instead. that way the password won't show up in .bash_history.
But it is clear text within the file...
I suggest that you do a read-variable for the password and use user interactive input to do that.
Then you fire your command by using the variable for the password.
Once completed you can just null / reset the variable and you won't see anything from the password itself in history.
 
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Many thanks to everyone! I decided to completely disable bash_history. Safety is more important))
 
Many thanks to everyone! I decided to completely disable bash_history. Safety is more important))

If you don't want a command to be written to history just prepend a space " command" instead of "command"

Given that the password has been written to disk already it can be restored.


Every process on the machine can read the command line arguments anyway, passing a password via arguments is the main problem here.
 
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