[darcs-users] Darcs failure over SSH

[Keith Browne]

Eric Kow wrote:
> Keith Browne wrote:
>>> during checkouts.  When I try to run "darcs get" to pull down a 
>>> repository from the remote machine, the process just hangs
>>> forever. Sometimes a process listing shows an scp going nowhere,
>>> sometimes  it's an sftp process.
>>> 
>>> Has anyone else seen similar problems?  Can anyone recommend how
>>> to begin troubleshooting this?
> 
> Hmm, my ssh test scripts sometime have a problem like this during
> pull over ssh (also MacIntel), but it's not systematic.
> 
> Otherwise, darcs get over ssh seems to work fine for me.  Then again,
>  I'm using the ssh that comes with MacPorts.  What version are you
> using?

I had been using the stock ssh binaries which ship with OS X.  I tried 
installing the MacPorts OpenSSH tools, and I have the same issue.

It's hard to pin down, because the symptoms aren't consistent, but 
generally I'm now able to run "darcs get" over an SSH transport, and it 
works.  When I run "darcs pull", however, one or the other of the 
transport programs gets stuck trying to fetch a single file, and it 
hangs.  Sometimes it's trying to fetch files under the _darcs 
subdirectory, and sometimes it's trying to get patches.

Here's a portion of the ps output to show what's happening:

tuxedo    7485   0.0 -0.1    41524   2504  p3  S+   11:13AM   0:00.01 
darcs pull tuxedo at localhost:DeepSky/darcstest/SR2-rewrite
root      7489   0.0 -0.1    30720   1260  ??  S    11:13AM   0:00.08 
/usr/sbin/sshd -i
tuxedo    7491   0.0 -0.0    29016    524  ??  Ss   11:13AM   0:00.00 
ssh tuxedo at localhost -S 
/Users/tuxedo/.darcs/tmp//darcs-ssh/tuxedo at localhost -N -f -M
tuxedo    7492   0.0 -0.0    30720    528  ??  S    11:13AM   0:00.01 
/usr/sbin/sshd -i
tuxedo    7499   0.0 -0.0    30212    680  p3  S+   11:13AM   0:00.00 
/opt/local/bin/scp -q -o 
ControlPath=/Users/tuxedo/.darcs/tmp//darcs-ssh/tuxedo at localhost 
tuxedo at localhost:DeepSky/darcstest/SR2-rewrite/_darcs/format 
/Users/tuxedo/DeepSky/darcstest/retest/darcsoJqHRR
tuxedo    7500   0.0 -0.1    30404   1060  p3  S+   11:13AM   0:00.00 
/opt/local/bin/ssh -x -oForwardAgent no -oPermitLocalCommand no 
-oClearAllForwardings yes -q -o 
ControlPath=/Users/tuxedo/.darcs/tmp//darcs-ssh/tuxedo at localhost 
-ltuxedo localhost scp -f DeepSky/darcstest/SR2-rewrite/_darcs/format

I'd already set up a repository in ~/DeepSky/darcstest/SR2-rewrite, and 
I was trying to pull it into an empty repository.  The scp command 
attempting to pull in the format file just hangs forever.

I'm puzzled by this problem, because Darcs was working fine for me for a 
couple of years on my iBook running OS X 10.3.  Now that I'm running an 
Intel Mac with 10.4, I can't access remote repositories via SSH.  It's 
got to be a toolchain issue of some kind, but I haven't been able to 
narrow it down.

Keith Browne
tuxedo at htq.org