Bug 526953

Summary:	RFE: console SSO: libvirt should authenticate user for access to guest consoles
Product:	[Community] Virtualization Tools	Reporter:	Matthew Booth <mbooth>
Component:	libvirt	Assignee:	Libvirt Maintainers <libvirt-maint>
Status:	CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE	QA Contact:
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	low
Version:	unspecified	CC:	berrange, crobinso, hbrock, jforbes, virt-maint, xen-maint
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2012-04-18 10:07:18 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:
Bug Blocks:	636033

Description Matthew Booth 2009-10-02 18:00:42 UTC

Description of problem:
You are required to enter a password when connecting to a remote libvirt over SSH. When you start a guest and attempt to view its console, you are required to enter the same password again. This should not be necessary. It's also not useful as an 'authentication timeout' security measure, as I am still able to create, destroy, start, stop and modify guests without re-authentication.

The password dialog box always provides a whack-a-mole problem when the console view is active and the underlying guest is having problems causing it to restart continuously. This is a major problem as the dialog is modal.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
virt-manager-0.8.0-6.fc11.noarch

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Connect to a remote libvirt over SSH
2. Enter password
3. Double click on a remote guest which is not running
4. Click Run
  
Actual results:
Have to enter same password again

Expected resuts:
Seamless display of console

Additional info:

Comment 1 Daniel Berrangé 2009-10-05 09:14:36 UTC

Those are different passwords surely - one for authenticating with Libvirt, one for authenticating with VNC. Indeed, each VNC server could be configured with a different password.

virt-manager should be offering to save any passwords so you don't have to enter it multiple times - just accept the pre-filled remembered value.. Or you can switch to an SSO solution like GSSAPI for auth...

Comment 2 Matthew Booth 2009-10-05 09:29:46 UTC

The fact that authentication with VNC is done separately is an uninteresting implementation detail from a user perspective. Perhaps that's the real bug here: libvirt should be able to mediate access to the guest's console.

Comment 3 Mark McLoughlin 2009-10-09 13:01:47 UTC

Okay, this is a fairly major design change; moving to upstream tracker

Comment 4 Daniel Berrangé 2011-07-07 14:36:14 UTC

This would be addressed the following patch proposal which uses FD passing over the libvirtd connection to access VNC without requiring any additional VNC auth

http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2011-June/msg01122.html