From: Jamis Buck <jamis@37signals.com>
Date: 2005-08-25T05:20:14+09:00
Subject: Re: Error using Net::SSH

On Aug 23, 2005, at 10:23 PM, Zach Dennis wrote:

> Jamis Buck wrote:
>
>> On Jun 27, 2005, at 2:05 PM, Adam P. Jenkins wrote:
>>
>>> Jamis Buck wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Jun 26, 2005, at 4:20 PM, Amit Chitre wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>> From WinXP, I'm trying (for the first time) to connect to remote
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> solaris server.  Code as under:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Thanks for the bug report. I'll look into it--in the meantime,   
>>>> you  can work around it by explicitly specifying the   
>>>> authentication method (s) to use:
>>>>   session = Net::SSH.start('remote.solaris.server', 'user', 'pwd',
>>>>                :auth_methods => %w(password keyboard-interactive))
>>>> (The problem is occurring because by default, the "publickey"    
>>>> authmethod is tried first and it can't find the SSH agent to  
>>>> use  for  that. That's a bug--it should silently fall back to  
>>>> the next  method.)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> Why does it need ssh-agent to use the publickey authentication   
>>> method? If your private key is encrypted and you don't have an  
>>> ssh- agent running, the ssh client should just prompt you for  
>>> the  private key password.  Or am I misunderstanding what you're  
>>> talking  about?
>>>
>> It doesn't--I was just trying to be brief in explaining the bug.  
>> What  it does (or rather, what it SHOULD be doing) is check to see  
>> if there  is an ssh-agent running, and if so, use that, otherwise,  
>> find the  private keys of the current user and read them directly.
>> Unfortunately, there is a problem right now, and what I believe  
>> is  happening is that it is trying to connect to an agent that  
>> isn't  running, because it is misinterpreting the result of the  
>> query to see  whether an agent is running.
>> Hopefully I'll have time to track this down sometime this week.   
>> (Patches would be welcome, hint hint.)
>>
>
> Jamis,
>
> Any luck on this. I get this from the latest 1.0.2 gem. I looked at  
> the source, but I do not see where there is any code that would  
> 'read' the keys in, I only see where it attempts to use Pageant,  
> and nothing else....
>
> I would like to use the latest net-ssh with my key authentication w/ 
> o using ssh-agent or pageant. Any ideas? Thanks,

Zach,

Not having a windows box on which to do any decent testing on this,  
it is hard for me to verify that a solution fixes the problem. If you  
(or anyone else) were to identify the problem and present me with a  
patch, I would gladly apply it, but my hands are rather tied, otherwise.

- Jamis