Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help@cygwin.com; run by ezmlm List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner@cygwin.com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin@cygwin.com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin@cygwin.com Reply-To: Cygwin List Message-Id: <6.2.1.2.0.20050912214921.0448c290@pop.prospeed.net> Date: Mon, 12 Sep 2005 21:55:04 -0400 To: Poor Yorick , cygwin@cygwin.com From: Larry Hall Subject: Re: ssh finds previous home directory In-Reply-To: <43262F14.5080202@pooryorick.com> References: <43262F14.5080202@pooryorick.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 09:44 PM 9/12/2005, you wrote: >In control panel I changed my $HOME environment variable tonight to , fired up cygwin, and typed ssh @. I received this error: > >Could not create directory '/.ssh'. > >Could someone please explain? Sure. It's simple. 'ssh' doesn't use $HOME to figure out your home directory. It uses the directory listed in '/etc/passwd' for the user you're logging in as. If you think about it, it makes sense. Otherwise, there'd be a paradox (i.e. how can 'ssh' know the environment of the user it's logging in as until it's finished logging in but it can't finish until it finds the home directory and it can't find that until it knows the user's environment...) -- Larry Hall http://www.rfk.com RFK Partners, Inc. (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office 838 Washington Street (508) 893-9889 - FAX Holliston, MA 01746 -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/