[RFC][PATCH] sftp transport whithout sftp subsystem configured

[Martin Pool]

On 7 Mar 2006, at 23:27 , Goffredo Baroncelli wrote:

> On Tuesday 07 March 2006 00:12, Martin Pool wrote:
>> On  6 Mar 2006, Goffredo Baroncelli <kreijack at alice.it> wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> on the server that hosts my projects, the sftp subsystem isn't
>>> configured on the sshd server. It still possible to do sftp but  
>>> it is
>>> needed to pass the explicit path of the sftp-server to the sftp  
>>> client.
>>
>> It sounds reasonable to me.  Perhaps it'd be better in a  
>> configuration
>> file?
>
> The value passed via the environment variable is distribution  
> dependent:
> if the server is ubuntu the correct value is "/usr/lib/openssh/sftp- 
> server", for a
> redhat distribution the correct value is /usr/libexec/openssh/sftp- 
> server....
>
> So i don't know if it is correct to use a configuration file: you  
> have to change
> the value depending to the server which you connect. I think that  
> using a
> environment variable permits a more simple and evident switch of  
> the configuration:
> think about the possibility that the server changed configuration and
> the value set in the configuration file is not good anymore...

It's a reasonable point.  On the other hand an unfortunate user who  
has branches on several different servers with different  
configurations won't want to be resetting this variable every time.

That suggests that it should be a configuration item keyed off the  
URL we're trying to reach.  That could also set e.g. http proxy  
settings.

However it's probably still useful to put this in for now just as a  
workaround.  I would like to see some kind of test for it, and a  
paragraph added to the manual (perhaps just in an appendix about  
configuration.)

> It should be more useful to insert this option in the url: I am  
> thinking about
> something like
>    sftp://[youroption=yourvalue]user@serve/path
> more options can be passed using a comma as separator

Perhaps the url is the most reasonable place to put it.  I'm not sure  
about that syntax though - is there any precedent for this in other  
systems?

-- 
Martin Pool