[Tutor] passwords in scripts

[Alan Gauld]

> an SSH implementation for them exists, but it is not
> worth my while trying to find out, because I will not
> be allowed to install anything on them (or even
> suggest it).  So I access them using telnetlib:

Hmm, they won;t lket you install a secure access tool 
but are happy to let you in with a known security horror 
in the shapoe of telnet.... An interesting approach to sys admin...

> But surely my problem is a very common one.  Every
> web-app must supply a username and password to make a
> connection to its backend database, for example.

command line arguments?

$ startapp -d mydb -l user/password &

That way they are 
1) kept secret(especially if you turn shell history off ;-) and 
2) can be changed every time you restart the server app and
3) you can have production and test databases running simultaneously...

Alan G