Error with crypt command

[Alfonso Plaza]

Hi all,
I`d like encrypt a shell variable with crypt, but i get the following error:

$ word_crpt=`echo "Hello word"|crypt "pass"`
crypt: cannot generate key

Any idea.

Thanks.

[Bruno Ganino]

info crypt

http://www.informatik.uni-frankfurt.de/doc/man/hpux/crypt.3c.html

http://www.informatik.uni-frankfurt.de/doc/man/hpux/crypt.1.html

[Umapathy S]

crypt can be used to encrypt files and not variables.

check the man page

[Alfonso Plaza]

Ok. but when i do the following its run ok.
$ echo "uncrypt"|crypt "pass"
ù⠰`öô¶$

And i run the next command in a Sun Solaris system and it run ok.

$ echo "uncrypt" |crypt "pass"
ù⠰`öô¶
$
$ palabra=`echo "uncrypt" |crypt "pass"`
$ echo $palabra
ù⠰`öô¶
$

And the save the text crypted to a file and pass de contain to a variable its not recommendes f

[Mike Stroyan]

It works fine for me.
It looks like crypt was unable to run /usr/lbin/makekey.
Perhaps it ran out of a resource such as nproc or maxuproc.
You could try that command in a shell that you
ran under tusc to watch for failing system calls.

$ tusc -fn -o crypt.tusc /usr/bin/sh
$ word_crpt=`echo "Hello word"|crypt "pass"`
$ exit
$ vi crypt.tusc

You can get tusc from
http://hpux.cs.utah.edu/hppd/hpux/Sysadmin/tusc-7.5/

[Steven E. Protter]

I'm getting the same results as you.

maxuprc and nproc are fine.

SEP

[Mike Stroyan · Accepted solution]

Interesting. I was working for me because I
have /usr/dt/bin/dtksh as my login shell.
The problem is that crypt is using wait() to
wait for makekey, but it is not checking the
process id when wait returns. In the pipe
command under most shells the crypt process
is continuing after the wait() call returns
with the process id of the forked shell
process that did echo builtin.

You can work around crypt's problem by making
the echo side of the pipe a little slower to
complete. That will allow the makekey to
finish first.

crypt=`echo "Hello word";sleep 1 |crypt "pass"`

[Mike Stroyan]

Hmm, that needs parentheses to keep the output
of the echo command heading through the pipe.

word_crpt=`(echo "Hello word";sleep 1 ) |crypt "pass"`