connection unexpectedly closed... solved

[Nigel Gilbert]

Utter silence!

socnt01:~ #     ssh root at sandi 'missing-rsync 2>&1'
socnt01:~ #     ssh root at sandi 'echo testing >&2'
socnt01:~ #


The key in authorized_keys is completely vanilla, as generated by 
ssh-keygen.  Here's the last few characters:

HDX9YgmYKiYyOvQMDKpeJXs= root at socnt01

Weird!


If I try the same but with a machine which does not have the local 
machine in its authorized-keys, ssh is forced to ask for a password, 
and under these circumstances, the error message is returned (socnt02 
is another SuSE Linux host):

socnt01:~ # ssh root at socnt02 'missing-rsync 2>&1'
Password:
bash: missing-rsync: command not found
socnt01:~ #

So I then moved root's authorized_keys on sandi elsewhere, to force 
sandi to ask for a password, and got no error message:

socnt01:~ # ssh root at sandi 'missing-rsync 2>&1'
root at sandi's password:
socnt01:~ #

which would seem to implicate Sun's ssh.


Nigel


On 13 Jan 2005, at 20:49, Wayne Davison wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 08:17:42PM +0000, Nigel Gilbert wrote:
>> Interestingly, when I use ssh to execute a non-existent command on the
>> remote machine, no error message is returned
>
> Fascinating.  Perhaps your ssh isn't returning the stderr output?  Try
> these commands:
>
>     ssh root at sandi 'missing-rsync 2>&1'
>     ssh root at sandi 'echo testing >&2'
>
> I see both the not-found error on stdout (from the first command) and
> the word "testing" on stderr (from the second command).  If you see no
> error for the first command, then it looks like your /bin/sh is not
> generating an error for the remote-command failure.  If you see the
> output from the first command but not the second, I'd suspect the
> ability of Sun's ssh to send back the stderr output of the process.
>
> You should also check for things that might affect the running of
> remote commands, such as filter scripts run from .ssh/authorized_keys.
> (If not written correctly, they might interfere with the stderr
> output.)
>
> ..wayne..
>
>