Re: Unable to clone an ssh repository (with ugly installation-specific workaround)

From: Stephen Sinclair <radarsat1@gmail.com>
Date: Feb 13, 2008, 14:17 UTC
Message-ID: <9b3e2dc20802130617m1c260c5fhb923e7a47e770f98@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <51419b2c0802130457g25892543n9db02e681d9605c5@mail.gmail.com>

On Feb 13, 2008 7:57 AM, Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 31 quoted lines

> On Feb 12, 2008 3:30 AM, Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
> > > A quick work-around for Elijah is to add
> > >
> > >    GIT_EXEC_PATH=/home/enewren/software/install/linux/git/bin
> > >
> > > to .profile on the remote host.
> >
> > I guess you meant .bashrc, as .profile is not sourced when using ssh
> > transport (it does not spawn a shell) AFAIR.
>
> As far as I can tell, setting paths in .bashrc doesn't really work (or
> else I'm just doing it wrong).  If it did, I would have never hit this
> bug.  Observe the difference between (feel free to replace PATH with
> GIT_EXEC_PATH; same general result occurs):
>
>   $ ssh localhost
>   # Wait for connection to be made, then run
>   $ echo $PATH
>
> AND
>
>   $ ssh localhost 'echo $PATH'
>
> AND
>
>   $ ssh localhost 'source .bashrc
>   echo $PATH'
>
> The first and the third give the same result, but the second gives
> something different.  It is the second form that git uses, meaning
> that my paths never get set up.

I had this problem as well, and the only solution I found was setting up my .ssh/environment file. I guess when you specify a command for ssh, it executes this command by itself, not within a shell environment. Usually it is bash that sources .bashrc and .profile, so you don't get your paths set up. Unfortunately .ssh/environment is not a scripting environment, so you have to just specify your full path there, based on what you get when you echo $PATH from the shell. Also, this requires putting the following in sshd_config:

PermitUserEnvironment yes

Which, and this is the biter, is not usually a default on most systems, as far as I can see.. so it could mean bugging the sysadmin if it's not your machine, which is not always convenient. Can't see any alternative though.

Steve