Re: [gentoo-user] Problems setting up sshd on an installation kernel

[Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>]

On Wednesday 09 December 2009 17:24:16 Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> > My first thought as well... I'd guess, just at a glance, that sshd was
> > started in the chroot, and that /mnt/gentoo/dev/ is bind mounted
> > properly, but /mnt/gentoo/dev/pts/ isn't.
> 
> As said, I fixed the problem by mounting /dev with --rbind.  This
> misunderstanding cost me, perhaps, 10 hours of my time.
> 
> I then reported my problem to the bug tracker, suggesting that the manual
> should be amended to say "--rbind" here.
> 
> I really wish I hadn't bothered.  My attempt to contribute was brusquely
> brushed aside by somebody who didn't even bother to thank me for my
> trouble (I always thank people reporting bugs to my project), said that
> he "couldn't reproduce [my] error", and asserted that sshd wasn't meant
> to work in the chrooted environment (why on Earth not?), implying it was
> my stupid fault for not following the manual rigidly and droidwise.  To
> cap it all, he patronisingly referred me to the appropriate sections of
> the fine manual (that's after my having reported how I'd already fixed
> the problem for me).

I can see his point of view, the chroot environment is something that exists 
only while doing the installation and as such is a temporary dodge so that you 
can do it. No binary distro runs sshd in the chroot it creates while 
performing the install either.

The supported method is to ssh into the "LiveCD" environment then chroot from 
that shell. It's hard to imagine a scenario where you would have more than one 
user doing that at the same time, so why run sshd in the chroot at all?

> See https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=296073
> 
> Seems to me, reporting problems to Gentoo is a waste of time, at least
> documentation problems.

That is a classic case of applying a specific case to the general case. You 
had a problem with one specific dev regarding one specific bug relating to one 
specific piece of documentation. To then assert that contributing anything to 
any aspect of Gentoo documentation is pointless merely on the basis of one 
experience is disingenuous to say the least.

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com