Re: Permanently caching password

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Fri, 23 May 2008 09:20:47 -0400 Haines Brown <address@hidden> wrote: 

HB> In ~/.emacs, I have the following lines: 

HB> (add-to-list 'load-path "/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/tramp/")

You shouldn't need that, but if you have it, it means you are using the
version of Tramp from Emacs.  If you have an older version of Emacs, my
netrc changes won't matter.  You need the latest CVS snapshot,
unfortunately.

HB> Note that I here supply a user account name before the "@", even
HB> though that information is also contained in my ~/.netrc. I have not
HB> experimented to find out if this is mandatory. I also found that the
HB> value of the variable needs to precede the domain name with "ftp." 

HB> In ~/.netrc I have for this site:

HB>   machine ftp.uss-irex.info
HB>     login ussir001
HB>     password XXX

With my changes, you'd have this in ~/.authinfo.gpg:

machine uss-irex.info login ussir001 password XXX

where .authinfo.gpg is normally encrypted by the EPA library (also part
of the latest Emacs from CVS).  To get my changes, though, you need the
latest Emacs from CVS (for auth-source.el and netrc.el in addition to
Tramp itself).  Otherwise, keep using the setup above since it works for
you :)

HB> I'd like to move the tramp configuration out of .emacs into a .tramp
HB> file similar to what I did with .gnus configuration, but I don't see
HB> why my separate .gnus file works because I have no reference to it in
HB> .emacs. If I wanted to create a ~/.tramp configuration file, should I
HB> have a line like this in .emacs:

HB> (setq load-path (append load-path (list 
HB>   ...
HB>   "~/.tramp"
HB>   ...
HB>   )))

The `gnus' function loads ~/.gnus.el (or whatever `gnus-init-file'
says), that's why it works transparently.

You can do the same with Tramp by explicitly loading ~/.tramp.el but
it's not automatic AFAIK.  Tramp's configuration is mostly controlled by
variables you can customize, so like most other Emacs packages users are
expected to keep the configuration in their Emacs custom file.  I
actually recently discussed (I was in favor) a proposal by Drew Adams in
the Emacs development list that users should be able to say "put every
customized variable that's from package X into file Y," but it didn't go
anywhere.

Ted