Not saving passwords / Realtek PCIe GbE NIC

[DJZioNYC]

machines.xml on a server drive with no permissions restrictions. If I install WOL on a box and import the xml, all settings are seen except passwords. Even if I save passwords on all boxes from one, then export that xml, passwords are blank.

Realtek NIC question I may answer myself: no S5 in BIOS but shutdown works. It would require S5 for it to wake up? Latest driver (9/18 date) and all WOL-related settings on.

[basildane]

I tested it here and it works. Passwords are encrypted. The private key is in the registry on the machine that created the passwords. This makes the XML unusable on any other machine (unless you copy the registry key). This is by design to protect your passwords.

If you try and restore the data to another machine, the passwords will have to be reentered, OR, copy the registry key first, then restore the data.

[Moopere]

Aha! This would explain this error which I've been getting for ages:

Password encryption error

Padding is invalid and cannot be removed

My use case might not be that common, I'm not sure. I have multiple Administration PC's that all have WOL installed and share the xml database via a network share.

There are problems with this approach, but its really flexible so I don't want to give it up. Problems though are:

• Can't remember passwords across machines (as per this Issue)
• Scheduler only works on the machine that you create the scheduled task on. Got to be vigilant here or else tasks get spread across machines all sharing the same xml database ... yikes!

My reason for posting .... is there a sane way to address the above? I understand the security aspect described, we don't want passwords in clear text in the xml for obvious reasons. Also the scheduler ... using the inbuilt Windows Task Scheduler seems fine until you distribute use across several machines.