getpwuid vs. getpwnam

[Bob Proulx]

John Cecere wrote:
> Please respond directly.
> [...]
> After building and installing openssh, I was having trouble getting my 
> RSA authentication to work. In investigating it, I noticed that it was 
> attempting to use /.ssh/id_rsa.pub as my public key file instead of 
> /export/home/rjohn/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.

Confused here.  Do you mean id_rsa or id_rsa.pub?  I would have
expected you to say id_rsa here and not the .pub file.

> Wouldn't it be more appropriate to use something like 
> getpwnam(getenv("LOGNAME")) instead ?

That would definitely break a lot of my scripts.  We also have
multiple root users here.  But we rely upon the fact that the file
~root/.ssh/id_rsa is the one and only root identify file.

Wouldn't it be reasonable to use the -i option?

  ssh -i ~bob/.ssh/id_rsa somehost ...

That allows you to use whatever identity file you wish to use.

> Since the login program itself (in both Linux and Solaris) sets
> LOGNAME, it's a reasonably safe assumption that it will get set
> correctly.

Some systems say LOGNAME.  Some systems say USER.

Bob