ssh problem with $HOME

ssh problem with $HOME

[Gavin Sinclair]

Hi,

When attempting a "cvs update" using over the ssh protocol (well, you
know what I mean ;), I get the following error:

  $ cvs up
  Could not create directory '/home/Gavin Sinclair/.ssh'.


That is surprising, because:

  $ echo $HOME
  /home/gavin


I have read the manpage, /usr/doc/*, googled, and searched the
archives, but found nothing.  The manpage (ssh), in particular, says
that $HOME/.ssh is where the heart is, so I suspect a Cygwin nuance.
Of course cvs is involved here, but I doubt it's having any influence.

Does anybody know what might be going on?

Thanks,
Gavin


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Re: ssh problem with $HOME

[Igor Pechtchanski]

On Thu, 4 Sep 2003, Gavin Sinclair wrote:

> Hi,
>
> When attempting a "cvs update" using over the ssh protocol (well, you
> know what I mean ;), I get the following error:
>
>   $ cvs up
>   Could not create directory '/home/Gavin Sinclair/.ssh'.
>
>
> That is surprising, because:
>
>   $ echo $HOME
>   /home/gavin
>
>
> I have read the manpage, /usr/doc/*, googled, and searched the
> archives, but found nothing.  The manpage (ssh), in particular, says
> that $HOME/.ssh is where the heart is, so I suspect a Cygwin nuance.
> Of course cvs is involved here, but I doubt it's having any influence.
>
> Does anybody know what might be going on?
>
> Thanks,
> Gavin

It's likely that the ssh daemon uses a different place to compute your
$HOME (usually /etc/passwd).  The default /etc/profile will use the
Windows environment variable instead, if it's set.  Please make sure your
/etc/profile contains the correct path to your home directory, and that
you don't set your $HOME somewhere where not all apps have access to it
(e.g., your Windows environment).

If that doesn't help, please (re)read the problem reporting guidelines at
<http://cygwin.com/problems.html> before posting.
	Igor
-- 
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Re: ssh problem with $HOME

[Gavin Sinclair]

On Friday, September 5, 2003, 2:42:57 AM, Igor wrote:

> On Thu, 4 Sep 2003, Gavin Sinclair wrote:

>> Hi,
>>
>> When attempting a "cvs update" using over the ssh protocol (well, you
>> know what I mean ;), I get the following error:
>>
>>   $ cvs up
>>   Could not create directory '/home/Gavin Sinclair/.ssh'.
>>
>>
>> That is surprising, because:
>>
>>   $ echo $HOME
>>   /home/gavin
>>
>>
>> I have read the manpage, /usr/doc/*, googled, and searched the
>> archives, but found nothing.  The manpage (ssh), in particular, says
>> that $HOME/.ssh is where the heart is, so I suspect a Cygwin nuance.
>> Of course cvs is involved here, but I doubt it's having any influence.
>>
>> Does anybody know what might be going on?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Gavin

> It's likely that the ssh daemon uses a different place to compute your
> $HOME (usually /etc/passwd).  The default /etc/profile will use the
> Windows environment variable instead, if it's set.  Please make sure your
> /etc/profile contains the correct path to your home directory, and that
> you don't set your $HOME somewhere where not all apps have access to it
> (e.g., your Windows environment).

That has fixed the problem; thanks.  Maybe I had manually set it
before, which was trashed when I reinstalled Cygwin recently.  It's a
pain to have these out of sync, but that's life in a Windows world.

I wasn't sure what you meant by the last sentence above.  I do set
$HOME in windows, so all apps can benefit from it, and /etc/profile
honours that.  Why ssh feels the need to look at /etc/passwd, when it
is documented to look at $HOME, I don't know.

Thanks again,
Gavin


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Re: ssh problem with $HOME

[Bill C. Riemers]

> I wasn't sure what you meant by the last sentence above.  I do set
> $HOME in windows, so all apps can benefit from it, and /etc/profile
> honours that.  Why ssh feels the need to look at /etc/passwd, when it
> is documented to look at $HOME, I don't know.

Quite simple.  When you run "ssh" it calls "sshd" through a socket
connection.
sshd is running as SYSTEM.  It is unlikely that the home directory for the
$HOME
directory for SYSTEM is the same as your home directory.   Since "sshd" is a
unix
program, not a Windows program it uses the standard method of setting the
$HOME
environmental variable, which is to look it up from /etc/passwd.

For example, on the computer I'm on now, my $HOME is /home/docbill .  My
wife's $HOME is /home/olivia .  SYSTEM's $HOME is /home/SYSTEM.  So if I do:
        ssh -l olivia localhost
sshd has to find out what my wife's home directory.  Not my home directory,
nor SYSTEM's home directory.  If instead it where just to use the current
value of "$HOME", I could change it to enter my wife's account even if I did
not know her password or the Administrator's password.

                                Bill



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