Re: Preferences for new Nessus GUI: XML or nessusrc?

* Renaud Deraison <[email protected]> [20040916 19:09]:
> On Thu, Sep 16, 2004 at 06:57:33PM +0200, Thomas Arendsen Hein wrote:
> > My question is: Should nessus preferences be kept in these XML
> > files, too, or should the old .nessusrc be used for this?
> 
> In any way, I'd like to keep backward compatibility with the old
> .nessusrc files.

We found a solution without changing the format of the .nessusrc
which doesn't need XML: We can just map the structure of tasks and
scopes to directories in the file system.

~/.nessusrc:
 - old format
 - new key: client_directory (default value = ~/.nessus or similar)
 - contains global preferences (e.g. paranoia_level) and
   default values for scopes

Example directory structure:

~/.nessus/
~/.nessus/task1/
~/.nessus/task1/task.nessusrc
~/.nessus/task1/logo.png
~/.nessus/task1/report.sty
~/.nessus/task1/scope1/
~/.nessus/task1/scope1/scope.nessusrc
~/.nessus/task1/scope1/report-20040917-103459/
~/.nessus/task1/scope1/report-20040917-103459/report.nessusrc
~/.nessus/task1/scope1/report-20040917-103459/report.nbe
~/.nessus/task1/scope1/report-20040917-103459/report.pdf
~/.nessus/task1/scope1/report-20040920-122011/
~/.nessus/task1/scope1/report-20040920-122011/report.nessusrc
~/.nessus/task1/scope1/report-20040920-122011/report.nbe
~/.nessus/task1/scope1/report-20040920-122011/report.tex

task.nessusrc:
 - format of nessusrc
 - only keys "title" and "comment"
   (or maybe store comment in a separate plain text file?)
 - no connection config or plugin selection here

scope.nessusrc:
 - format of nessusrc, uses ~/.nessusrc for default values
 - new keys: "title" and "comment"

report.nessusrc:
 - copy of scope.nessusrc at the time the scan was performed
 - new key: "server_session_name" with the name of the saved session
   on the nessus server.
 - should connection config (nessusd_host, nessusd_user, ssl paths)
   be removed from this file and only plugin selection be kept?

Every directory may contain other files, e.g. logo.png and
report.sty for creating reports with a company logo on it.


This way we can drop the requirement for XML and keep absolute
compatibility for old clients, and the command line client doesn't
need to know about all these new things (e.g. multi server support)
then.

Question: Should scopes have an option like "always use global
settings", so the local scope.nessusrc will only be used for title
and comment, i.e. like with tasks?

Thomas

-- 
Email: [email protected]
http://intevation.de/~thomas/
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