openssh bugs - May 2016 - [Bug 2575] New: ssh-copy-id fails when it can not find any key file in ~/.ssh

https://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2575

            Bug ID: 2575
           Summary: ssh-copy-id fails when it can not find any key file in
                    ~/.ssh
           Product: Portable OpenSSH
           Version: 7.2p1
          Hardware: All
                OS: Linux
            Status: NEW
          Severity: trivial
          Priority: P5
         Component: ssh-copy-id
          Assignee: unassigned-bugs at mindrot.org
          Reporter: jjelen at redhat.com

Today I run  ssh-copy-id  from a machine without any generated key (and
without any key in ssh-agent) and it failed hard with weird results:

    /usr/bin/ssh-copy-id: ERROR: failed to open ID file '/root/.pub':
No such file or directory
        (to install the contents of '/root/.pub' anyway, look at the -f
option)

It is caused by the false expectation, that there are some keys in
~/.ssh/ on the line 59:

    DEFAULT_PUB_ID_FILE="$HOME/$(cd "$HOME" ; ls -t .ssh/id*.pub
2>/dev/null | grep -v -- '-cert.pub$' | head -n 1)"

It sets

    + DEFAULT_PUB_ID_FILE=/root/

which passes the condition

    + '[' -r /root/ ']'

and the execution gets into the function   use_id_file()  unnoticed and
fails to open file

    /usr/bin/ssh-copy-id: line 87: /root/.pub: No such file or
directory'

Checking also if the file is regular file should solve the issue.
Failing earlier is probably not a good idea, because we can still use 
ssh-agent  keys (remains working).


diff --git a/contrib/ssh-copy-id b/contrib/ssh-copy-id
index bef5c95..f750e70 100644
--- a/contrib/ssh-copy-id
+++ b/contrib/ssh-copy-id
@@ -189,7 +189,8 @@ SSH_OPTS="${SSH_OPTS:+$SSH_OPTS }'$(quote
"$USER_HOST")'"
 # and populate "$@" for later use (only way to get proper quoting of
options)
 eval set -- "$SSH_OPTS"

-if [ -z "$(eval $GET_ID)" ] && [ -r
"${PUB_ID_FILE:=$DEFAULT_PUB_ID_FILE}" ] ; then
+if [ -z "$(eval $GET_ID)" ] && [ -r
"${PUB_ID_FILE:=$DEFAULT_PUB_ID_FILE}" ] \
+    && [ -f "$PUB_ID_FILE" ] ; then
   use_id_file "$PUB_ID_FILE"
 fi

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https://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2575

Philip Hands <phil at hands.com> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |phil at hands.com
             Blocks|                            |2647
           Assignee|unassigned-bugs at mindrot.org |phil at hands.com
             Status|NEW                         |RESOLVED
         Resolution|---                         |FIXED

--- Comment #1 from Philip Hands <phil at hands.com> ---
Thanks for the report, and sorry for taking so long to get round to it.

Here's the commit that fixes this:

 
http://git.hands.com/?p=ssh-copy-id.git;a=commitdiff;h=b32a55c8eb4995ef56880682d5ff2eeb9856928d

In which I decided to rather make sure that DEFAULT_PUB_ID_FILE remains
unset in this case, and then deal with that case.

My latest version incorporating that change is here:

  http://git.hands.com/ssh-copy-id

which should work for you, and will hopefully make it's way into
OpenSSH in the not too distant future.

Cheers, Phil.


Referenced Bugs:

https://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2647
[Bug 2647] Tracking bug for OpenSSH 7.5 release
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