Subject: Re: sshd and /usr/bin/zsh
From: Brad King <[email-masked]>
To: "Peter A. Castro" <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 08:37:32 -0400

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your responses.  Here is some more information.

Peter A. Castro wrote:
>  From the bash shell, did you just run zsh as a subshell or did you try
> running it as a login shell (eg: zsh -l)?

I tried both.  They both work.  It seems that the hang only occurs if 
zsh is the main login shell.  I did discover that if I run

ssh kingb@localhost /bin/zsh -l

then it hangs even if the passwd entry is set to bash.  However if I set 
the passwd entry to zsh and run

ssh kingb@localhost /bin/bash -l

I still get the hang.  I also discovered that if I set Administrator's 
passwd entry to zsh then I CAN login via ssh as administrator and get a 
zsh prompt.  The "kingb" user is not an administrator or a power user. 
I checked the permissions of all zsh package files and the .dll files 
that get loaded and the user has read and execute permission where needed.

>  As another experiment, could
> you enable the rlogin service ('login' in /etc/inetd.conf) and then start
> inetd and try using rlogin to see if zsh hangs there as well?  You'll
> need to install the inetutils package, run 'inetd --install-as-service',
> then 'net start inetd', then try rlogin from another machine.  I'd like
> to narrow it down to either a problem with ssh interaction or

After installing the service I get this message when I try to start it:

The service is not responding to the control function.
More help is available by typing NET HELPMSG 2186.

I tried manually starting the service through Computer Management but I 
got a similar error.  Since the problem still occurs from the 
system-owned shell I'm guessing it is not an ssh interaction problem, 
though.

 > perhaps a
> problem with the system/user profiles in /etc/z* or your local .z*
> profiles.

I tried moving these all out of the way but it did not change anything. 
  If I run

ssh kingb@localhost /bin/zsh -l -v

then I see the contents of the ~/.zshenv, /etc/zprofile and ~/.zprofile 
files before the hang but it doesn't seem to actually have processed the 
commands (because adding a "touch ${HOME/foo.txt" command does not 
create the file).

> I'll see if I can reproduce your setup, though I only have W2K and not XP
> (well, that's not quite true... I *could* setup an XP instance, but I
> probably *won't* :).  Is there anything special with your sshd setup?
> Did you customize anything?  Is the service run under 'SYSTEM' or under
> your userid?

I just confirmed that the cygwin sshd service is running as the local 
SYSTEM user.

> Wait... your using a domain account aren't you?  Hmm... That might
> complicate things.  Are you logging in to your domain account via ssh or
> into a local machine account?

No, those domain accounts are left from when the machine used to be on a 
domain.  The user with this problem is just a local machine account.

-Brad

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