Re: bcvi - run vi over a 'back-channel'

[Anonymous Monk]

The right way to get back-channels through ssh is through the agent forwarding. "Agent forwarding" is really just a magic TCP connection that follows you around and always goes back to your home host. This requires a bit more infrastructure (need to make a fake "agent" that proxies to a real agent or to your bespoke app, as appropriate), and ideally coming up with some way to let multiple "back channels" coordinate, but once you have that it's pretty slick.

There's only one implementation of this idea I've seen in practice, though there are plenty of other potential uses: ssh-xfer.

-- Nathaniel

[grantm]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "the right way" to get back channels. Are you suggesting that SSH has some sort of generic support for agent forwarding? I'm familiar with SSH's authentication agent forwarding (and in fact couldn't get by without it) but it looks to me to be 'baked in' to SSH and in particular the ssh daemon on the target host. I don't think I'd get very far trying to deploy bcvi by requiring a customised version of the SSH daemon on target hosts. Are you aware of some way to configure support for agents other than SSH's own authentication agent?

Is there some functionality you think bcvi lacks that would be made possible by using an 'agent' implementation?