hang on exit - bug or no bug?

[Lee Eakin]

I'll try to explain the issue here as I see it.  The rsh command (on most
systems) does not hang on exit, and does not cause rcp to lose data.  If
ssh only performed the same function as rsh and rcp we could examine how
various systems handle this and the solve the problem.  We might even be
able to solve it with previous versions of ssh.

The problem is that ssh does more than that (and we all want it to).  It
provides port-forwarding or tunnelling.  This complicates the issue of when
to drop the connection.  The same is true for X applications.  For tunnels
we want the connection to hang until all file descriptors are closed, but
for commands we don't, unless we are transfering files.

I am not in the same league with the developers (or most of the
contributors) when it comes to writing code.  I wish I was.  This is an
interesting problem that I would love to solve, but since I can't I hope
this at least sheds a little light on the problem for those waiting on a
solution, and perhaps even inspires someone with more C skills than I to
look at it from a slightly different angle and maybe even come up with an
elegant solution.

  -Lee

-- 
    Lee Eakin - leakin at dfw.nostrum.com
 
Unix is simple. It just takes a genius to understand its simplicity