[Bug 2288] New: documentation of options defaulting to "none"

[bugzilla-daemon at mindrot.org]

https://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2288

            Bug ID: 2288
           Summary: documentation of options defaulting to "none"
           Product: Portable OpenSSH
           Version: 6.7p1
          Hardware: All
                OS: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: trivial
          Priority: P5
         Component: Documentation
          Assignee: unassigned-bugs at mindrot.org
          Reporter: calestyo at scientia.net

Hey.

I was just going through the documentation, and there are several
options which are documented to default to "none", e.g. in
sshd_config(5):

>AuthorizedPrincipalsFile
...
> The default is “none”, i.e. not to use a principals file – in
...

or

>Banner  The contents of the specified file are sent to the remote user
> before authentication is allowed.  If the argument is “none” then
> no banner is displayed.  This option is only available for proto‐
...

Now I looked through through the code, and it doesn't look as if "none"
would really be handled special for these options, a test with "Banner
none" confirmed this, if there is a file /none, it's contents are
printed.


To the contrary, there are options in servconf.c for which "none" *is*
apparently actually considered special, as e.g. AuthorizedKeysCommand.


I would guess that the same issues may happen again for other options
for both, sshd and ssh.


1) So ideally someone should really go through all the options, and
check whether the defaults still match.

2) The manpages should somehow better denote, what is actually value
and what is just prose text, since “none” (as it also appears for
“yes”) could mean both, the literal string "none", i.e.:
DirectiveName none
or that the directive's value is empty, i.e.:
DirectiveName ""

3) I personally tend to generally using the later or somehow better
handling cases when a directive may take special enums and aribtrary
strings like filenames.


Cheers,
Chris.

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