mjhjmtu

I am trying to write a script which is saving the credentials to a .netrc file and then it is reading from the file in order to pass them to a curl command and saves the returned cookie file for future use. I am interested if this is secure way to pass the username and password and if there is a man in the middle attack would they be able to sniff the credentials if the server which I am trying to reach is over HTTP.

#!/bin/bash

IP="192.168.0.1"
user="Administrator"
pass="Password1234"

function credentials 
 mkdir "$HOME"/.netrc
 rm "$HOME"/.netrc/credentials.txt
 touch "$HOME"/.netrc/credentials.txt
 echo "machine $IP"; echo "login $user"; echo "password $pass"; >> "$HOME"/.netrc/credentials.txt
 chmod 600 "$HOME"/.netrc/credentials.txt


function cookie 
 curl -v -c cookie.txt -n "$HOME"/.netrc/credentials.txt http://"$IP"/setup.php


credentials
cookie

I have checked and the credentials.txt file is properly saved in the corresponding directory and the credentials have the right permissions, but when I try to run the cookie function, I got the following error: Couldn't find host 192.168.0.1 in the .netrc file; using defaults. Why curl is not able to fetch the configured username and password from the credentials.txt file?

As I understand the man page (of curl), the option -n just enable looking for a .netrc file, but it does not expect the file path of this file. This is the option --netrc-file. From the man-page:

--netrc-file
 This option is similar to --netrc, except that you provide the 
 path (absolute or relative) to the netrc file that Curl should use. 
 You can only specify one netrc file per invocation. If several 
 --netrc-file options are provided, only the last one will be used. 
 (Added in 7.21.5)

 This option overrides any use of --netrc as they are mutually 
 exclusive. It will also abide by --netrc-optional if specified.