[Bug 483928]

[Aab]

(In reply to comment #40)
> Okay, I tried Ubuntu's packaging of OpenSSH (version 1:5.8p1-7ubuntu1)
> with your patch, and it powered through everything. Here is a list of
> all the error messages I received:
> 
> A.B.C.D: Connection closed by remote host
> Connection closed by A.B.C.D
> Connection to A.B.C.D timed out while waiting to read
> Received disconnect from A.B.C.D: 10:  Protocol error
> Received disconnect from A.B.C.D: 10:  Protocol error
> Received disconnect from A.B.C.D: 11:  SSH Disabled
> Received disconnect from A.B.C.D: 2: Client Disconnect
> Received disconnect from A.B.C.D: 2: Protocol Timeout
> connect (`A.B.C.D'): Network is unreachable
> no 'ssh-rsa' hostkey alg(s) for A.B.C.D
> read (A.B.C.D): Connection reset by peer
> read (A.B.C.D): No route to host
> 
> (This is ssh-keyscan output with /^#.*$/ filtered out, all IPs zapped,
> and 'sort -u'd)

The number of ways that key access can be terminated keeps increasing,
doesn't it?

FWIW - the message "A.B.C.D: Connection closed by remote host" has been
changed to "read(A.B.C.D): Connection closed by remote host" to be more
consistent with the other messages (as above) issued in the same code
block.

> Now the question is, why hasn't this been checked in already! (Have you
> tried making some noise on the mailing list?)

My oops.  I have had my focus redirected to other projects and, besides,
I'm very lazy (;-}).

Dumb me, I thought at least a question or two would be forthcoming from
the OpenSSH folks.  Guess not. I saw the mailing list reference in the
README and promptly forgot about it.  I will send the patch there.  I
apologize for the slowness.

Question for you.  The ssh-keyscan code currently limits the maximum
number of used file descriptors to <256.  The biggest problem that I've
seen with that number is, if you ever have a very large number of down
hosts (which we have had), the code uses the available fds and has to
wait for a '-Tn' timeout on one of them to start another key access.
I've made a local modification that changes that number to 512.  The
code seems smart enough so that, if the OS has smaller limits, nothing
will break.  Right now Debian defaults to 1024 fds max and (at least
our) Redhat to 20480.  So 512 is a modest increase.  Would you have an
opinion on this?

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/483928

Title:
  ssh-keyscan(1) exits prematurely on some non-fatal errors

Status in Portable OpenSSH:
  Confirmed
Status in “openssh” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: openssh-client

  This concerns openssh-client 1:5.1p1-5ubuntu1 in Karmic.

  I am using ssh-keyscan(1) for its intended purpose: building an
  ssh_known_hosts file for a large network. Most of the hosts on this
  network are well-maintained systems, with properly-functioning SSH
  servers, and present no difficulty to the program.

  However, a handful of hosts are barely alive, with SSH servers that
  are not exactly in good working order. ssh-keyscan(1) currently will
  scan these systems, encounter some form of error, and then---right
  here is the problem---exit in the middle of the scan. The last bit of
  stderr output may look like

  	# A.B.C.D SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_4.3
  	# A.B.C.E SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_4.3
  	# A.B.C.F SSH-1.99-OpenSSH_3.7p1
  	Connection closed by A.B.C.F

  or

  	# A.B.C.D SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_4.1
  	# A.B.C.E SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_4.1
  	# A.B.C.F SSH-2.0-mpSSH_0.1.0
  	Received disconnect from A.B.C.F: 10:  Protocol error

  or

  	# A.B.C.D SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_4.4p1
  	# A.B.C.E SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_5.0p1
  	# A.B.C.F SSH-2.0-mpSSH_0.1.0
  	Received disconnect from A.B.C.F: 11:  SSH Disabled

  (These are the different failure modes I've observed to date)

  ssh-keyscan(1) needs to be robust to these kinds of errors---simply
  make a note of them, and continue on with the scan. I don't want to
  have to find out which systems are misbehaving by running and re-
  running the scan (each run yields at most one bad host, obviously),
  nor manually edit out the few bad apples from the input list of hosts
  (especially considering that this particular subset can change over
  time). Neither is feasible when the number of hosts being scanned is
  very large.

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