Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Message-ID: <011301c373b3$b4999490$c900000a@docbill002> From: "Bill C. Riemers" To: , "Igor Pechtchanski" References: <819734548 DOT 20030904220801 AT soyabean DOT com DOT au> <8824123 DOT 20030905193228 AT soyabean DOT com DOT au> Subject: Re: ssh problem with $HOME Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2003 09:40:13 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165 > I wasn't sure what you meant by the last sentence above. I do set > $HOME in windows, so all apps can benefit from it, and /etc/profile > honours that. Why ssh feels the need to look at /etc/passwd, when it > is documented to look at $HOME, I don't know. Quite simple. When you run "ssh" it calls "sshd" through a socket connection. sshd is running as SYSTEM. It is unlikely that the home directory for the $HOME directory for SYSTEM is the same as your home directory. Since "sshd" is a unix program, not a Windows program it uses the standard method of setting the $HOME environmental variable, which is to look it up from /etc/passwd. For example, on the computer I'm on now, my $HOME is /home/docbill . My wife's $HOME is /home/olivia . SYSTEM's $HOME is /home/SYSTEM. So if I do: ssh -l olivia localhost sshd has to find out what my wife's home directory. Not my home directory, nor SYSTEM's home directory. If instead it where just to use the current value of "$HOME", I could change it to enter my wife's account even if I did not know her password or the Administrator's password. Bill -- 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/