[Pkg-ltsp-devel] Bug#490897: ldm: tcsh users unable to login

[Vagrant Cascadian]

On Tue, Nov 03, 2009 at 04:16:06PM +0100, Florian Schlichting wrote:
> this bug is more than a year old already, but when you were testing, did
> you also try something like this:
> echo <sh-code> | ssh <server> /bin/sh

i don't recall trying anything like that, though...
 
> I think this should be less problematic with regard to quoting, and also
> upstream seemed to be open to an approach that specified a shell
> explicitly, instead of implicitly relying on a user's login shell or
> trying to write code that will run on all types of shell.

the code already specifies /bin/sh explicitly, the problem is in how that shell
gets called: if the user's default shell is tcsh, then /bin/sh is called by way
of tcsh, and we can't rely on a consistant syntax for setting environment
variables.

additionally, all of the other hooks into ldm from ldm itself, ltsp and ltspfs
would also have to call the shell in an unconventional way, which is in dozens
of places.

hate to say it, but without a complete redesign of ldm and significant
re-writing of ltsp and ltspfs, unfortunately this will have to remain a
wontfix.

live well,
  vagrant