openssh-agent polling

[Alan Jenkins]

David Leonard wrote:
> Damien Miller wrote:
>> On Wed, 12 Sep 2007, Alan Jenkins wrote:
>>> This may be a stupid question - but why does ssh-agent fork off
>>>  a child and then exec the subcommand in the *parent* process? 
>>> It forces the agent in the child process to poll the parent, so
>>>  it can exit when the parent finishes.  If the agent was the 
>>> parent process, it could use wait() instead.  I'm sure there's 
>>> some reason.
>>> 
>>> It'd be nice to take ssh-agent off the list of polling 
>>> processes you get with powertop[1], however far down it is.
>>> 

> ssh-agent starts its command in the parent process probably so that
>  you can get something useful from $! returned in your startup 
> script,

Surely that's fixable - wait() gives you the terminated child's exit code.

> and to avoid the situation where ssh-agent could get an untrappable
> signal and leaves the underlying command running.

Which way round do you mean this?  Are we trying to avoid leaving the 
underlying command running if ssh-agent is killed, or do we want it to 
carry on running independently?  It sounds like you meant the 
subcommand should be killed if ssh-agent is, but my understanding of 
the current behaviour is that the subcommand keeps on running.

If the aim is to keep the subcommand running, I guess we're stuck with 
polling.  If I've got my un*x right, it's not possible to wait() on a 
process unless it would get killed if you terminate.

> I can't see a clean, portable way of getting rid of the poll. On 
> linux, maybe you use inotify or /proc or something??

Apparently inotify doesn't tell you when /proc directories go away 
:-(.  There is a netlink message that gets sent for accounting 
purposes, but you have to configure it in, so I don't know how widely 
available it would be, and IIRC it's not very well-suited because you 
get messages for all processes, not just one.

Alan