From: Andreas Ericsson Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2008 11:30:42 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH] connect.c: add a way for git-daemon to pass an error back to client Message-ID: <490C3DE2.3010808@op5.se> In-Reply-To: Nicolas Pitre wrote: > On Sat, 1 Nov 2008, Johannes Schindelin wrote: > >> Hi, >> >> On Fri, 31 Oct 2008, Tom Preston-Werner wrote: >> >>> The current behavior of git-daemon is to simply close the connection on >>> any error condition. This leaves the client without any information as >>> to the cause of the failed fetch/push/etc. >>> >>> This patch allows get_remote_heads to accept a line prefixed with "ERR" >>> that it can display to the user in an informative fashion. Once clients >>> can understand this ERR line, git-daemon can be made to properly report >>> "repository not found", "permission denied", or other errors. >>> >>> Example >>> >>> S: ERR No matching repository. >>> C: fatal: remote error: No matching repository. >> Makes sense to me. > > Note that this behavior of not returning any reason for failure was > argued to be a security feature in the past, by Linus I think. > By me actually. I wrote the patch for it. Showing "no matching repository" means git-daemon can be used to disclose information about the remote server's filesystem layout. While I understand that it's sometimes a useful feature, please don't ever enable it by default. That said, I like this patch, as it only works client-side and just enables others to write code that let's the daemon (if configured to do so) ship a more informative error message. -- Andreas Ericsson andreas.ericsson@op5.se OP5 AB www.op5.se Tel: +46 8-230225 Fax: +46 8-230231