ssh finds previous home directory

[Larry Hall]

At 09:44 PM 9/12/2005, you wrote:
>In control panel I changed my $HOME environment variable tonight to <new home directory>, fired up cygwin, and typed ssh <user>@<host>.  I received this error:
>
>Could not create directory '<previous home directory>/.ssh'.
>
>Could someone please explain?

Sure.  It's simple.  'ssh' doesn't use $HOME to figure out your home 
directory.  It uses the directory listed in '/etc/passwd' for the user
you're logging in as.  If you think about it, it makes sense.  Otherwise,
there'd be a paradox (i.e. how can 'ssh' know the environment of the user
it's logging in as until it's finished logging in but it can't finish until 
it finds the home directory and it can't find that until it knows the user's 
environment...)



--
Larry Hall                              http://www.rfk.com
RFK Partners, Inc.                      (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
838 Washington Street                   (508) 893-9889 - FAX
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