[20809] in Athena Bugs
clearcerts vs. clear-netscape-password, etc.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Hawkinson)
Wed Sep 25 17:42:26 2002
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 17:42:24 -0400 (EDT)
Message-Id: <200209252142.RAA23189@multics.mit.edu>
To: bug-infoagents@MIT.EDU
From: John Hawkinson <jhawk@MIT.EDU>
With users running both Netscape and Mozilla, the presence of
multiple, confusing, different choices to get rid of certificates
is suboptimal:
[coleco-sidewinder!jhawk] ~> cd ~infoagents/bin
[coleco-sidewinder!jhawk] ~infoagents/bin> gls -Ll *clear* *zap*
-r-xr-xr-x 1 brlewis mit 257 Nov 25 1997 clear-netscape-password
-rwxr-xr-x 1 tbelton mit 1765 Sep 8 15:35 clearcerts
-r-xr-xr-x 1 brlewis mit 257 Nov 25 1997 zap-certificates
It appears that users don't know when they should be using which one.
I would suggest a couple of options:
#1 Rename "clearcerts" to "clear-mozilla-certs". I don't think this
is a very good option.
#2 Have all 3 commands do the same thing, viz remove both netscape
and Mozilla certificates.
#3 Have all 3 commands to the same thing, viz. prompt the user
as to which certificates to remove.
As somewhat of an aside, part of the point of having such a command
was that Netscape had no good UI to correcting the problem of a forgotten
cert db passphrase. If Mozilla has the same problem, perhaps users
should be educated. [*looks briefly*] Oh, there is a "Reset Master Password"
choice in the Master Passwords section. Perhaps we should encourage users
to use this, perhaps having "clearcerts" (or whatever) mention it.
To my mind, the correct user interface here would be to have the
"Please enter the master password" dialogue box have a "Reset" button.
Perhaps it would only appear after a failed attempt.
Would bug-infoagents be interested in such a patch?
--jhawk
