Ubuntu
mc package

sftp vfs support not using key-based authentication

Bug #1629497 reported by mith brown
6
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Midnight Commander
Invalid
Unknown
mc (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

Hi,

I've been able to successfully use key-based authentication using the FISH protocol (I just run: cd sh://centos in mc's command line and it would work). centos is described in my ~/.ssh/config as follows:

Host centos
    HostName 192.168.1.239
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/centos
    User centos

and it successfully logs in when I provide it with the Host in my ~/.ssh/config file without prompting me for a name or password.

However, the same is not true when I select SFTP instead (cd sftp://centos) and it requests a password, so it looks like the SFTP VFS is not processing all the lines in ~/.ssh/config.

I checked and noticed this ticket upstream - https://www.midnight-commander.org/ticket/3238 - that says that they resolved this issue in 4.8.15. However, on 4.8.15 on Ubuntu 16.04, I still have this problem. I downloaded and installed from source code (v4.8.17) and indeed the issue was fixed in upstream.

I am using the latest version of mc on Ubuntu. Here are the package details:

$ apt policy mc
mc:
  Installed: 3:4.8.15-2
  Candidate: 3:4.8.15-2
  Version table:
 *** 3:4.8.15-2 500
        500 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial/universe amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Thanks.

Revision history for this message
Yury V. Zaytsev (zyv) wrote :

Well, I'm not sure how we can help you. There is an option to install from source, or else unofficial binary packages are provided here: http://www.midnight-commander.org/wiki/Binaries . It is way to hard to backport fixes to 4.8.15, and the other problem is you need to identify them in the first place. I would say the only reasonable strategy would be to request a backport of the complete package, but I'd suggest you to wait with filling a bug for that until 4.8.18 is released and gets into Ubuntu.

Changed in mc (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
mith brown (mthbrown) wrote :

Thanks Yury. The actual patch that fixes the issue is over here - https://www.midnight-commander.org/attachment/ticket/3581/mc-3581-sftpsfs-fix-bad-pointer-arithmetic-in-config_parser.patch - and it was marked is fixed in 4.8.16 (https://www.midnight-commander.org/wiki/NEWS-4.8.16) as part of the patch related to 3851.

I can live with my compiled version for the time being.

Any idea when 4.8.18 will be released?

Thanks.

Revision history for this message
Yury V. Zaytsev (zyv) wrote :

> Any idea when 4.8.18 will be released?

I hope to start tomorrow and be done by Monday. I'm not sure how long it will take after that for it to appear in Ubuntu so that a backport can be requested, but I would say a couple of months is not an unreasonable estimate, because it has to go through Debian unstable first anyways.

> The actual patch that fixes the issue is over here

I see, if you are confident, you can try Ubuntu SRU process, I've done this a couple of times in the past and it works, but it's sometimes ends up taking months, which is why I'd say backport is a more interesting alternative.

Bug Watch Updater (bug-watch-updater)
Changed in mc:
status: Unknown → Invalid
To post a comment you must log in.
This report contains Public information  
Everyone can see this information.
Subscribing...

Other bug subscribers

Remote bug watches

Bug watches keep track of this bug in other bug trackers.