Re: Problems with HISTORY, HISTFILE and ssh

[Michael Albinus]

Richard Edgar <address@hidden> writes:

> Greetings,

Hi,

> I'm using the default method to connect to remote servers. However, for
> some reason, it's not dealing with my .ssh/config file correctly. On one
> remote machine, I have a different username. If I do
> ssh machine
> from the command line, the config file is read, and the ssh goes ahead
> fine. However, if I do
> /machine:~/file.txt
> in emacs, it tries logging in with my _local_ user at machine (however,
> it is still expanding <machine> into the fully qualified domain name).
> Some of the .ssh/config is working, as evidenced by:
> /address@hidden:~/file.txt
> where ruser is the remote user. This version even successfully uses the
> available ssh key to do the authentication. Have I missed something obvious?

Tramp 2.1 always expands to the default user name it expects
internally. It does not check ~/.ssh/config (yet). As workaround, you
might set the default user name for this specific host:

(add-to-list 'tramp-default-user-alist '("ssh" "\\`machine\\'" "ruser"))

"machine" and "ruser" are your remote machine and user. I'll check
whether it can be done inside Tramp. It's a little bit difficult,
because for performance reasons it shouldn't check again and again. A
kind of caching of the results must happen therefore.

> As an additional issue, this particular machine doesn't like tramp
> messing around with HISTORY and HISTFILE. I got locked out of my
> account: messing with those variables triggered an intrusion alert. I've
> zapped that bit from tramp.el, but I thought you should be aware of the
> issue.

Yes, it must be documented at least. Or it should be configurable. 

Which policy of that machine generated the intrusion alert? Are there
some rules not to touch $HISTORY and $HISTFILE? Or something more
general?

>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Richard

Best regards, Michael.