adding a pause utility in the distribution

[Peter W]

On Fri, Sep 21, 2001 at 11:49:26AM -0700, Neale Pickett wrote:

> This is going to look silly, but I've seen it asked so many times that
> I'm starting to think it should be included in the OpenSSH distribution.
> People want to set up persistent tunnels without having to keep a shell
> open.  The following program can be used with -f to do just that:
> 
>   #include <unistd.h>
>   int main()
>   {
>     pause();
>     return 0;
>   }

Yes, it does look kinda silly. :-) Users can always install similar apps 
on the target machine and do
 ssh me at otherhost /path/to/that/pause/app

Plus tunnels that go through NAT devices and stateful firewalls tend to 
collapse if there's no data, so your approach would not even be 
universally useful; some users might need something like
   #include <unistd.h>
   #include <string.h>
   int main()
   {
     while (1) {
       sleep(120);
       printf(".");
     }
     return 0;
   }
to maintain a tunnel. Since tunnel preservation techniques vary depending 
on the network configuration, IMO adding this sort of thing to OpenSSH 
doesn't sound like a great idea.

-Peter