Bug 85634

Summary: ssh-agent authentication problems due to stupid limitation (only 40 environment variables are passed to ssh)
Product: [Retired] Red Hat Linux Reporter: Peter Urban <urbi666>
Component: rdistAssignee: Phil Knirsch <pknirsch>
Status: CLOSED ERRATA QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 7.3CC: rvokal
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: 6.1.5-30 Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2003-09-04 12:41:12 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Peter Urban 2003-03-05 10:20:17 UTC
From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.2) Gecko/20021203

Description of problem:
rdist 6.1.5 has a stupid limitation. When it invokes rsh (or a replacement),
only 40 environment variables are passed.
This is annoying when one uses ssh as transport, with the ssh-agent
to avoid having to type the password each time. Chances are
that the SSH_AUTH_SOCK variable is dropped. In this case, ssh will
not use the ssh-agent but ask for a password instead.

A typical environment nowadays has ~40 variables (at least after logging into
KDE), do this can be a problem for a lot of people.

Fixing the bug is probably simple: change the constant 40 to say 1024
in the source code and recompile rdist.

rdist 7.0.0alpha10 fixes this bug but is unstable otherwise (the make install
rule is broken).

As far as I can see, the bug was not fixed in any later version of the Red Hat RPM.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):


How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. set up ssh-agent authentication for a remote host
2. use ssh-add
3. add lots of environment variables (so that you have a lot more than 40)
4. call rdist with ssh as transport
    

Actual Results:  rdist asks for a password (probably; there is no guarantee that
rdist will drop the SSH_AUTH_SOCK variable).

Expected Results:  rdist should transfer the files without asking for a password.

Additional info:

Comment 1 Phil Knirsch 2003-09-04 12:41:12 UTC
Fixed in rdis-6.1.5-30 and later.

Read ya, Phil

Comment 2 John Flanagan 2004-04-22 00:29:36 UTC
An errata has been issued which should help the problem described in this bug report. 
This report is therefore being closed with a resolution of ERRATA. For more information
on the solution and/or where to find the updated files, please follow the link below. You may reopen 
this bug report if the solution does not work for you.

http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHEA-2004-170.html