openssh unix dev - Sep 2007 - openssh-agent polling

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.

Please CC me in replies

Yours, Alan

[1] http://www.linux-powertop.org

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.
I don't understand what you mean by polling - once started, ssh-agent
spends all its time sitting in select() waiting for requests.

-d