Re: Session channel extension to specify home directory?

[nisse%lysator.liu.se@localhost (Niels Möller)]

Joseph Galbraith <galb-list%vandyke.com@localhost> writes:

> We just had a user request us to start a shell session
> for them in an arbitrary directory.

Why not just use

  byte      SSH_MSG_CHANNEL_REQUEST
  uint32    recipient channel
  string    "env"
  boolean   want reply
  string    "HOME" 
  string    path to use as home directory

to set the home directory to what you want. You still need to hack
your server to let the provided value override value stored in the
user database, but you don't need any protocol changes.

> string    path to use as home directory [UTF-8]

As for character sets for file names, I would really hope that we can
pass that can of worms over to other protocols, like sftp.

> Would people implement this in their servers?

Probably not.

But it's at least reasonable for a client to have a user interface
that lets the user attempt to set arbitrary environment variables
using SSH_MSG_CHANNEL_REQUEST "env". And reasonable for a server to
have a configurable list of environmant variables that clients are
allowed to change.

Regards,
/Niels