Auto-entering Password In Sn.exe

Question

I need to create post build event to perform the following:

sn -i MyKey.pfx MyKeyContainerName
tlbimp $(ConfigurationName)\MyCom.tlb /out:$(ConfigurationName)\NETMyCom.dll /keycontainer:MyKeyContainerName
sn -d MyKeyContainerName

When the Visual Studio executes the 1st statement it requires a password and waits until the user specifies it and fails.

Microsoft (R) .NET Framework Strong Name Utility Version 2.0.50727.42 Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Enter the password for the PKCS#12 key file: Failed to parse the PKCS#12 blob in mykey.pfx -- The handle is invalid.

I tried to specify the password using sn command line arguments, but I could not see a way to do it.

Please help.

Regards, Hilmi.

Answer 1

After a long investigation i can run sn.ex for various automated environments such as Azure devops. My code is here:

Start-Process cmd.exe 
Sleep 3
$WshShell = New-Object -ComObject WScript.Shell
Sleep 3
$WshShell.sendkeys(".\sn.exe -i  $PfxCertificatePath  VS_KEY_10D1C85C6387479B{Enter}");
Sleep 3;
$WshShell.sendkeys("**password**{Enter}");
Sleep 3;
$WshShell.sendkeys("{Enter}");

Answer 2

Unfortunately, no approached mentioned here worked for me. I have to register couple pfxs in a docker container.

So I re-developed the sn.exe -i <infile> <container> command in C# using the RSACryptoServiceProvider. The source and the app are on GitHub in the SnInstallPfx project.

The SnInstallPfx app accepts a PFX key and its password. It computes the key container name (VS_KEY_*) automatically (borrowed from MSBuild source code) and installs it to the strong name CSP.

Usage:

SnInstallPfx.exe <pfx_infile> <pfx_password>