gsi-openssh silently fails to install if not running as root about gct HOT 4 CLOSED

Fixed in GCT 6.2.20201212 maintenance release.

from gct.

Hi,
thank you for opening the issue and providing feedback.
Several remarks. First of all, this is actually an issue with openssh-portable itself, inherited by 'our gct' version, so perhaps we should discuss it there (see reporting bugs in their README).
Concerning the issue itself, note that /var/empty is a special directory used as a chroot as part of the privilege separation. See gsi_openssh/source/README.privsep for details.
Given this special role and its required permissions, I don't think it can or should be in a user-owned directory. In fact, installing an ssh server as non-root is in general not very useful nor secure.
Note that it is possible to set the directory explicitly using --with-privsep-path= as described in that same README.privsep. So something like

./configure --prefix=$PWD/install --with-privsep-path=$PWD/install/var/empty \
            --enable-gsi-openssh

actually works.

from gct.

Thanks for the response. I had assumed that setting prefix would be enough to take care of all those other sorts of paths, but I guess they have good reason not to. It's good to know there's a proper configuration method to get around this.

As such then I'd like this issue to turn to interpretation (2) I mentioned above, namely that I explicitly wanted gsi-openssh installed and the installation of that component silently failed. In my opinion the make install procedure should have treated the error as fatal and immediately halted the installation of gct. Is that an issue with openssh-portable, or with this project?

from gct.

Hi,
I agree it would be nice if make would end with an non-zero exit value and that's indeed a minor bug. On the other hand, I don't think the error is that hidden in the output: it's pretty much the last that's printed.
The fix would be to add an || exit 1 to line 15 of the main Makefile.am and similarly to the other target lines. In fact the GT_ALL_STAMPS already has one.
And to add similarly || exit 1 to line 141 of the main Makefile.am and similarly for the other *-local targets.

from gct.