Basically, I want to submit this FTP in a background mode, from within crontab.
The password which I want to protect is the password for the target machine to which I want to FTP and it is different than my AIX password.
I still think that chmod to 600 is not enough since other UNIX admins can view my .netrc file as root supersuser.
Possibly, I was thinking about this method:
Built .netrc on a fly, every time the ftp is initiated from within crontab. This file will exist for the duration of the ftp, and then it will be deleted after the ftp is finished. As I create the. netrc file I will use previously generated encrypted password and decrypt it before inserting it on the first line of the .netrc file.
Of course, any time I change my password on the Netware server, I would need to encrypt this new password and save it again on my AIX home directory.
This seems to be too much.
Can you do something like this?
When creating .netrc file via VI or some other editor:
1) Type “xxx” - this will show on the screen
2) Type “yyy” - this will show on the screen
3) Within VI editor or some other editor, hit some control keys or some diting option to suppress the subsequently typed "zzz"
save the file
On the file view (by using cat/more): etc. I will never see "zzz"
but it will be really there?
I think that I am looking for something impossible, probably unreasonable and technically impossible?
Thanks again