From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
To: John Ratliff <john@technoplaza.net>
Cc: git@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: git credential cache timeout questions
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2021 12:04:40 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <YC/vqJBSnDHoLIdJ@coredump.intra.peff.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAP8UukiL0niGSm3o7uYNBzL3FP-UEgfOuq-Tu=fksWJkerT5fg@mail.gmail.com>
On Fri, Feb 19, 2021 at 10:46:48AM -0500, John Ratliff wrote:
> I have configured my git to cache my credentials for 12 hours using
> this section in my .gitconfig
>
> [credential "https://mygithub.example.edu"]
> username = myuser
> helper = cache --timeout 43200
>
> However, the credentials don’t always seem to expire after 12 hours.
> Sometimes I come back the next morning and the credentials still work.
> This is generally after leaving at 5:00 PM and coming back in the next
> day at 9:00 AM, well past the 12 hour timeout.
>
> Is there any way to see the current timeout value? Is it a rolling
> timeout (i.e. any git action resets the timeout)?
It's the "rolling" thing, though the source is a bit subtle. The
credential-cache helper sets an absolute expiration when the value is
stored, and it doesn't update it on a "get" request.
However, Git's interaction with the helpers is generally:
- when we need a credential ask for one
- when a credential is rejected by a server, tell helpers to erase it
- when a credential is accepted by a server, tell helpers to store it
And it's that last one that provides the rolling timeout, because we do
it even if the credential came from a helper in the first place!
I actually wrote a patch long ago to switch this behavior:
https://lore.kernel.org/git/20120407033417.GA13914@sigill.intra.peff.net/
But it turned out some people actually rely on it. :)
There's some discussion in that thread about paths forward, and I think
I even played around with it back then. But then it sat on my todo list,
and now it has been 9 years, so I don't remember if there were good
reasons not to push it forward, or if I simply never got around to it (I
suspect the latter; nobody had a pressing use case that was solved by
avoiding the rolling timeouts, it just seemed to me to be a bit less
surprising). I'd be happy if somebody wanted to revisit the topic.
(To your other question, "is there a way to see the timeout value", the
answer is "not really, without running it under gdb". I wouldn't be
opposed to adding more diagnostic output to the daemon. But you can also
see some of what's going on by setting GIT_TRACE=1 in the environment,
which will show the extra "store" operation being done by Git).
-Peff
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2021-02-19 17:06 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 3+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2021-02-19 15:46 git credential cache timeout questions John Ratliff
2021-02-19 17:04 ` Jeff King [this message]
2021-03-10 15:41 ` John Ratliff
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