Question

MM Contribute Publishing Services change ftp password

Asked by: elishat

We have several sites set up to be maintained with Contribute.  We use MM's Web Publishing System to manage access to those sites.  All of the directories and files are owned by the same Linux user. We needed to change the password for that user. Now we are unable to connect to any of the sites with Contribute.  There is no way to change it, because Contribute won't let me in to change the FTP settings.

Can someone tell me how to change the connection information on the CPS server?  Is there a file where the FTP username and password are stored?  If so, I assume the password is encrypted/hashed somehow.  Any thoughts?

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Asked On
2005-08-01 at 12:20:47ID21511807
Tags

contribute

,

ftp

,

password

,

change

Topic

Web Development Software

Participating Experts
2
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0
Comments
6

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Answers

 

by: umbraePosted on 2005-08-01 at 13:43:59ID: 14573838

the connection keys for users are stored on the server in MM_CPS_DATABASE_DIR (set in contributes administrator).

if you look in each directory under there, you'll see connection_key.stc for each connection key created. This is an xml file.

***Code removed by MHenry, Page Editor, 8 Aug 2005 ***


I'm actually surprised macromedia uses such a simple hashing scheme to encode user passwords. Hopefully this will be more secure in the near future, because I can see this being a major security vulnerability, if I can decode the hash in about 30 minutes myself.

There will probably be some sort of connection key file that you'll also need to change on the user's local machine, so be aware of this as well.

HTH,
-Umbrae

 

by: umbraePosted on 2005-08-01 at 13:45:34ID: 14573861

to be more clear, MM_CPS_DATABASE_DIR is in the contribute publishing services web-based interface, under User Directory->Settings

 

by: elishatPosted on 2005-08-03 at 04:05:01ID: 14587092

The connection_key.stc files seem to be just the connection keys that Contribute would send to a user if we weren't using the centralized site management.  Editing that file isn't having any effect on my inability to connect.  Nice job picking apart the encryption on the password, though.

 

by: elishatPosted on 2005-08-03 at 11:15:06ID: 14591492

OK, here is the ugly solution I came up with after all the decent ideas I had came to nothing.

To fix it, I changed the password back temporarily.  That enabled Contribute to connect to all of the sites again.

Then I went into My Connections in Contribute, selected a site, clicked Administer, went to the Publishing Services tab, clicked on Edit Connection, and checked the "Users must enter their own login info" box.  This was the only way I could get Contribute to forget the old password that I wanted to get rid of.  I then had to re-enter the username and old password to reassure Contribute that I still knew valid credentials.  And I had to re-enter the remote path.

After doing that for every site, I was able to change the password back to the new one.  Opening Contribute again, each site now didn't have a username and password that it could get wrong.  I then went into each site and un-checked that "Users must enter their own login info" box and entered the username and new password.  Again, I had to re-enter the remote path info, too.

On the whole, a majorly annoying PITA, but it was better than having to delete and re-create eavery site.

I hope this is the sort of thing that MM fixes in some future release.

 

by: MHenryPosted on 2005-08-08 at 23:04:08ID: 14630177

Removed code which could present a security issue, per http://www.experts-exchange.com/help.jsp#hi100.

MH

 

by: MHenryPosted on 2005-08-08 at 23:05:34ID: 14630182

user resolved, 500 points refunded

MHenry
Page Editor

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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