Re: CVS problem with ssh

[Derek Price]

Larry Jones wrote:

>Richard M. Stallman writes:
>  
>
>>If this is what it takes for you to fix the bug, I will do this.
>>    
>>
>
>Instead of spending large amounts of effort on half-assed workarounds,
>why don't you make a concerted effort to explain the problem to the
>OpenSSH developers and encourage them to fix the actual problem?
>

Though I agree that it appears, at the least, to be rude to change the
blocking status of a potentially shared file descriptor, I can also see
the argument from the SSH side that they wish to be able to expect the
behavior they request from said file descriptor.

Since there is no actual standard on the matter, a widely available set
of *_block stdio variants seems a reasonable way to satisfy everybody,
to me, and could be used in other tools which encounter similar problems.

>  As far
>as I can tell, no one has actually bothered to do that, which leads me
>to believe that it's not really a serious problem for anyone.
>  
>

This is possible, though, as I previously presented, I am fairly certain
the race condition still exists.  Even if no one is currently reporting
problems, it may crop up again as networks and platforms change, or
perhaps as the new code gets tested on new variants of the same.

Of course, you may be correct that it makes the most sense to wait until
we see more actual problem reports with the new code before spending
time fixing it, but then, as long as someone else submits a complete
patch (i.e. it isn't my time being spent writing it), I don't mind
applying it so much since I am fairly sure the problem is still present,
if currently dormant.

Cheers,

Derek