[Gt-eos] GSI-OpenSSH Packages for Ubuntu

[Frank Scheiner]

Hi all,

also explicitly adding Mattias to the addressees.

On 4/29/19 11:16, Mischa Salle via Gt-eos wrote:
> Hi Adam,
> 
> our apologies for not getting back to you (not sure about the others,
> but I was offline last week).
> 
> In the past we have tried to get gsi-openssh in Debian, but we never got
> it there, see e.g. https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=687517

I'm not specifically familiar with the Debian processes for new packages 
- ITP ([1]) and RFP ([2]) in this case - but what is included in the 
above mentioned pseudo-bug doesn't sound to me like a complete nor 
official refusal.

[1]: https://wiki.debian.org/ITP

[2]: https://wiki.debian.org/RFP

Apart from that I wonder if this process should not be restarted - maybe 
this time with another approach, if the following makes sense:

Would it be possible to include the GSI-OpenSSH patches into the 
"official" OpenSSH source package ([3]) and produce a second set of 
server and client packages in addition to the existing OpenSSH server 
and client packages which link to the GSI libraries. This way the amount 
of duplication would be reduced and limited to the binary packages only.

[3]: https://salsa.debian.org/ssh-team/openssh

And if Debian can afford to have three implementations of SSH clients 
(openssh-client ([4]), lsh-client ([5]), putty-tools ([6])) with assumed 
identical functionality, a fourth implementation with the added 
functionality of X.509-like authentication shouldn't hurt too much. It 
more hurts the users that they can't use GSI-OpenSSH on Debian/Ubuntu.

UPDATE: There's also another SSH implementation available in Debian, the 
one from Dropbear, though I assume this does not provide all the 
features of the other mentioned implementations.

[4]: https://packages.debian.org/sid/openssh-client

[5]: https://packages.debian.org/sid/lsh-client

[6]: https://packages.debian.org/sid/putty-tools

Apart from all that, why not providing pre-compiled GSI-OpenSSH packages 
for Debian/Ubuntu ourselves in the meantime? Even more so when we 
already have the packaging meta data ready.

> The rest of the GCT is in the Debian repositories. Also the packaging is
> there, see https://github.com/gridcf/gct/tree/master/packaging/debian/gsi-openssh/debian
> so in principle building is not too difficult, but we should indeed
> provide pre-built binaries.

Cheers,
Frank

-- 
Frank Scheiner

High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS)
Department Project User Management & Accounting

Email: scheiner at hlrs.de
Phone: +49 711 685 68039

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