--- /dev/null
+[[meta title="Monkeysphere interferes with clusterssh"]]
+
+clusterssh is a package that allows you to control multiple ssh xterm
+sessions at the same time.
+
+When the monkeysphere-ssh-proxycommand is enabled and I launch 5 or more
+cssh sessions, intermittently one or two out of every five will fail
+with: Connection timed out during banner exchange.
+
+I tried to debug by running:
+
+ MONKEYSPHERE_LOG_LEVEL=debug cssh -D -d <server1> <server2> etc.
+
+However, while it produced some private data, it didn't give me any
+insight into what was going wrong. Also, it didn't output any
+Monkeysphere debugging info.
+
+I had no luck with google and the error message being output.
+
+This isn't a huge priority (it's not hard to disable the
+monkeysphere-ssh-proxycommand before running cssh), however, it would be
+nice to figure out why it's not working.
+
+---
+
+What do you mean by "produced some private data" when you set the log
+level to DEBUG? Monkeysphere does not output any "private" data in
+the sense of private keys or passwords or anything like that. Maybe
+you mean the cssh debug mode outputs private data? or do you just
+mean "info that you don't want to post here"? It might be useful to
+see some output, so maybe you could just block out the nasty bits?
+But I'm not sure it will help.
+
+The problem may be due to the locking of the known\_hosts file while
+the proxycommand is running. At the moment, the
+monkeysphere-ssh-proxycommand can only be run serially, since each
+invocation will lock the known\_hosts file while it updates it. I
+think this is required, since we obviously can't have two invocations
+modifying the file at the same time. However, it's probably possible
+to decrease the amount of time it takes to update the file. It's not
+done very efficiently at the moment. The file is locked basically at
+the very begining, and is locked while all gpg interactions are done,
+which are slow. I think it should be possible to take the gpg
+interactions out of the loop.
+
+I just tried cssh and it doesn't seem to work very well with my ssh
+setup at all. For instance, the simultaneous ssh connections cause
+simultaneous calls to the agent to get my permission to use the key,
+which don't interact very well with each other. This of course is not
+a monkeysphere problem but a general problem with trying to make
+simultaneous ssh connections with an agent that want key use
+confirmation.
+
+-- jrollins
+
+---
+
+I can get cssh to work fine with a confirmation-required agent if i
+turn off the monkeysphere proxycommand:
+
+ cssh -l username -o '-oProxyCommand=none' $(cat hostlist.txt)
+
+with the proxycommand, i definitely get the "Connection timed out
+during banner exchange" message.
+
+However, i'm also able to get the cssh connection to work if i assert
+that a longer connection timeout is acceptable:
+
+ cssh -l username -o '-oConnectTimeout=30' $(cat hostlist.txt)
+
+Perhaps this is an acceptable workaround?
+
+-- dkg
+++ /dev/null
-[[meta title="Monkeysphere interferes with clusterssh"]]
-
-clusterssh is a package that allows you to control multiple ssh xterm
-sessions at the same time.
-
-When the monkeysphere-ssh-proxycommand is enabled and I launch 5 or more
-cssh sessions, intermittently one or two out of every five will fail
-with: Connection timed out during banner exchange.
-
-I tried to debug by running:
-
- MONKEYSPHERE_LOG_LEVEL=debug cssh -D -d <server1> <server2> etc.
-
-However, while it produced some private data, it didn't give me any
-insight into what was going wrong. Also, it didn't output any
-Monkeysphere debugging info.
-
-I had no luck with google and the error message being output.
-
-This isn't a huge priority (it's not hard to disable the
-monkeysphere-ssh-proxycommand before running cssh), however, it would be
-nice to figure out why it's not working.
-
----
-
-What do you mean by "produced some private data" when you set the log
-level to DEBUG? Monkeysphere does not output any "private" data in
-the sense of private keys or passwords or anything like that. Maybe
-you mean the cssh debug mode outputs private data? or do you just
-mean "info that you don't want to post here"? It might be useful to
-see some output, so maybe you could just block out the nasty bits?
-But I'm not sure it will help.
-
-The problem may be due to the locking of the known\_hosts file while
-the proxycommand is running. At the moment, the
-monkeysphere-ssh-proxycommand can only be run serially, since each
-invocation will lock the known\_hosts file while it updates it. I
-think this is required, since we obviously can't have two invocations
-modifying the file at the same time. However, it's probably possible
-to decrease the amount of time it takes to update the file. It's not
-done very efficiently at the moment. The file is locked basically at
-the very begining, and is locked while all gpg interactions are done,
-which are slow. I think it should be possible to take the gpg
-interactions out of the loop.
-
-I just tried cssh and it doesn't seem to work very well with my ssh
-setup at all. For instance, the simultaneous ssh connections cause
-simultaneous calls to the agent to get my permission to use the key,
-which don't interact very well with each other. This of course is not
-a monkeysphere problem but a general problem with trying to make
-simultaneous ssh connections with an agent that want key use
-confirmation.
-
--- jrollins
-
----
-
-I can get cssh to work fine with a confirmation-required agent if i
-turn off the monkeysphere proxycommand:
-
- cssh -l username -o '-oProxyCommand=none' $(cat hostlist.txt)
-
-with the proxycommand, i definitely get the "Connection timed out
-during banner exchange" message.
-
-However, i'm also able to get the cssh connection to work if i assert
-that a longer connection timeout is acceptable:
-
- cssh -l username -o '-oConnectTimeout=30' $(cat hostlist.txt)
-
-Perhaps this is an acceptable workaround?
-
--- dkg
projects / monkeysphere.git / commitdiff