Accessing a network folder without exposing username and password

Ignition
1

Is there a way to give ignition access to a network drive without exposing the username and password?

I use the following command to grant the access, but I lose the access after the gateway is restarted. I had to add the command to a project startup script and it works great, but this exposes the username and password. Is there a way to accomplish what I am doing without exposing the user name and password? Short of manually issuing the command each time Ignition restarts (obviously this is certainly not ideal).

os.system("net use \\10.10.###.###\x_scales password_goes_here /USER:10.10.###.###\sco")

2

Configure the gateway service itself with a user name and password that has the desired network privileges. (Instead of the default LOCAL_SYSTEM.) Then use UNC paths everywhere in your gateway and it will Just Work™. This is the only reliable approach. (In windows. If you run your gateway on Linux, you can use autofs with suitable credentials storage.)

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3

I've recently started preaching this approach when working with the support team.

There's been a little pushback from customers who just love their drive letters, but this is the way.

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4

Thank you, I use UNC paths only, so this approach will work great for me.

I will try this late tonight when we are done packing our main pack lines. I see how to add the user name to the Ignition service, and we have a service account setup in Active Directory that I can use, so I should be able to set this up. But, my only concern is will it affect anything else in Ignition or will it behave the same? I will test when only a smaller shed is running, but just wanted to get any insight on problems that may occur with this type of change.

5

If currently set up for LOCAL_SYSTEM, then switching to a generic domain user will add that user's network permissions, but may remove some local administrator permissions. You definitely want to test in a non-production window.

1 Like