UPDATE Re: Missing environment variables when ssh'ing into Windows machine

cygwin@kosowsky.org cygwin@kosowsky.org
Mon Jan 6 01:54:00 GMT 2020


cygwin@kosowsky.org wrote at about 10:45:51 -0500 on Friday, January 3, 2020:
 > cygwin@kosowsky.org wrote at about 01:59:19 -0500 on Friday, January 3, 2020:
 >  > 
 >  > The Windows variables $USERNAME, $USERPROFILE and $USERDOMAIN are set properly
 >  > when opening a cygwin bash shell on a Windows 10 machine.  
 >  > 
 >  > However when I *ssh* into that same machine (under the same user name),
 >  > the variables are unset in the bash shell.
 >  > 
 >  > More generally, it seems that none of my Windows User variables are
 >  > set under a remote ssh bash shell while they are all inherited properly
 >  > when opening a cygwin bash shell directly on the machine.
 >  > 
 >  > I have not had that problem in the past on my other (older) Windows
 >  > machine
 >  > The only differences that come to mind are:
 >  > 1. The other machine is Win7 and not Win10
 >  > 2. On this (Win10) machine I installed cygwin as a non-admin while the
 >  >    Win7 machine was installed with admin privileges
 >  > 3. Because of #2, I start ssh on the Win 10 machine by running
 >  >    /usr/sbin/sshd manually as a user, while on Win 7, I am able to
 >  >    start sshd as a service, running as SYSTEM
 >  > 4. This (Win10) machine doesn't have an /etc/passwd file whereas the
 >  >    Win7 machine does.
 >  > 
 >  > I am assuming that #3 may be the source of the problem...
 >  > 
 >  > Still seems strange that these seemingly very basic Windows variables
 >  > are not available under ssh.
 >  > 
 >  > Any way to fix this?
 >  > 
 > 
 > Said another way,  assuming that the issue is my non-admin Cygwin
 > install and my attendant need to run 'sshd' manually rather than as
 > service, what can I do to best 'fake' running 'sshd' as a service that
 > will allow it to load the environment variables automatically.
 > 
 > For 'cleanliness' and 'consistency' purposes, I would like to do that
 > as a wrapper around the call to 'sshd' rather than by tampering with
 > /etc/sshd_config and /etc/sshd_config or by manually recreating and exporting the
 > Windows variables in .bashrc or .bash_profile. In other words, I want
 > to keep my standard installation configuration as clean and unchanged
 > as possible.
 > 

I verified that the difference is solely related to whether sshd is
started directly by calling /usr/bin/sshd or by starting the service
via 'cygrunsrv -S sshd' -- the former doesn't set the environment
variables, while the latter does!
Even if both are run with admin privileges!

Really wish I knew what 'cygrunsrv' does differently...

--
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple



More information about the Cygwin mailing list