Re: ssh, smbntsec, mounted home directory - is it possible

[Andrew DeFaria <Andrew at DeFaria dot com>]

Andrew DeFaria wrote:
> I've found that in life if you don't completely solve a problem you tend
> to come back upon it until you do. Dredging up an old issue
> (http://sourceware.org/ml/cygwin/2006-10/msg00553.html) of which Corinna
> commented here: http://sourceware.org/ml/cygwin/2006-10/msg00644.html
> but it was what Igor said in
> http://sourceware.org/ml/cygwin/2003-06/msg00080.html that really got me
> thinking.
>
> From what I understand, if you wish to share a home directory via SMB
> among a number of Windows machines then you will have problems with ssh
> and permissions if you are attempting to use pre-shared ssh keys. By
> using pre-shared ssh keys you are attempting to allow passwordless ssh
> login - secure ssh login but passwordless nonetheless. As such, when you
> log into the Windows machine you will not have access to your SMB home
> directory, since as Igor says "trying to access network shares from a
> session you did with passwordless authentication"... is "not gonna
> work". As I understand it, when no password is supplied then no password
> is available to give Windows in order to authenticate access to the SMB
> share. So, during the attempt to authenticate the pre-shared key, the
> sshd process cannot access the user's ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. So then it
> eventually has to prompt for the password. But even worse, after giving
> the password you still have no access to your home directory.
>
> Although Cygwin 1.7 may offer some hope:
>
>     Cygwin now allows storage and use of user passwords in a hidden area
>     of the registry. This is tried first when Cygwin is called by
>     privileged processes to switch the user context. This allows, for
>     instance, ssh public key sessions with full network credentials to
>     access shares on other machines.
>
> my client isn't able to use Cygwin 1.7 yet.
>
> So to recap: I'd like to provide pre-shared key ssh access to a
> particular username. I cannot, however, use an SMB shared home directory
> for that user without encountering problems with ssh and permissions.
>
> If the above statement is not true and you have any ideas on how to
> achieve these objectives then let me know.
>   
Anybody care to comment or at least acknowledge this issue?
-- 
Andrew DeFaria <http://defaria.com>
If electricity comes from electrons, where does morality come from?


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