Very strange.

The code (within xymonnet) that loads the file first looks for $XYMONHOME/etc/netrc and then looks for $HOME/.netrc (where $HOME should be ~xymon, the xymon user's home directory).

Could be the format you have is not recognised by Xymon. Unfortunately, there are no diagnostics if the file is unreadable or malformed.

The code seems to suggest that you can use keywords: machine, login, password, account, macef and default.

A comment can be denoted by a hash (#), leading and trailing whitespace is ignored. Tokens are separated by whitespace (tabs and spaces).

So something like this:

my authentication params

hostname beatbox.example.com login webadmin password pr1v at te

This will cause an authentication string of "webadmin:pr1v at te" to be assigned to the hostname beatbox, presumably to be used in a URL such as https://beatbox.example.com/testthis.html. The string is base64-encoded and included in an "Authorization: Basic <base64>" header.

On my system, if I run "strace xymoncmd xymonnet www.example.com 2>&1 | grep netrc" I get this:

open("/usr/lib/xymon/server/etc/netrc", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) open("/usr/lib/xymon/.netrc", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

So it's definitely looking for it. If I mis-type the hostname, to something that doesn't exist in hosts.cfg, or if I choose a host that doesn't have "http://<something>", the strace doesn't show any output, so it doesn't even try to find a netrc file.

I appreciate that you have another solution, but you (and others) might find it helpful to find out why this isn't working for you.

Cheers Jeremy

On Fri, 19 Mar 2021 at 18:58, Chris Pretorius <chrisp at lightstone.co.za> wrote:

I tried

$XYMON/etc/netrc and $XYMON/etc/.netrc

And xymon user homedir both netrc and .netrc

Also set chmod 600 to all the files

I found a different end point on the webserver (Windows, not IIS) that doesn?t require authentication that I can use in the test.

Seems to be doing the job.

Thanx everyone for your guidance, much appreciated.

*From:* Jeremy Laidman <jeremy at laidman.org> *Sent:* Friday, 19 March 2021 08:12 *To:* Chris Pretorius <chrisp at lightstone.co.za> *Cc:* Xymon Mailing List <xymon at xymon.com> *Subject:* Re: [Xymon] Hide usernam and password in http test

The online manpage (probably the most up-to-date) says that the netrc file is in $XYMON/etc/netrc - note that there is no dot in the filename.

https://xymon.sourceforge.io/xymon/help/manpages/man1/xymonnet.1.html

On Thu, 18 Mar 2021 at 22:45, Chris Pretorius <chrisp at lightstone.co.za> wrote:

Hi

Im running a xymon server installed from the Terabithia repository

Release: xymon-4.3.30-1

I added a http test that requires basic authentication. The password has special characters.

The test works when I add the username and password in the full url, ie. https://server/page.htm?user=User&password=p at sw0rd

The man pages mention a file ~/.netrc where you can store username and password for basic authentication

Which directory should the file be stored on the server.

Best regards

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