"ssh-keygen -R hostname" errors out with non-existent known_hosts

[Thorsten Glaser]

On Wed, 24 Mar 2021, Damien Miller wrote:

> > Exit 0, please. An absent known_hosts file doesn't contain the entry
> > the "ssh-keygen -R hostname" entry is expected to remove, and the
> > result should be considered a success for the command.

Agreed.

> "grep foo /nonexistent" or "sed -i s/foo/bar /nonexistent" don't return
> status 0 either for exactly the same reason.

This is more of a ,g/entry/d than a /entry/d in ed(1) parlance.

It’s a convenience command to remove an entry from the list of
known hosts, whether it exists or not or the file doesn’t even
exist; it should only fail when the job can’t be done (e.g. the
file is write-protected).

Think of it as 'rm -f known_hosts/entry' which won’t fail if
known_hosts/ doesn’t exist.

bye,
//mirabilos
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