Bug 3285

Summary:	Wrong documentation on -D The bind_address
Product:	Portable OpenSSH	Reporter:	dewi jones <dewijones92>
Component:	Documentation	Assignee:	Assigned to nobody <unassigned-bugs>
Status:	NEW ---
Severity:	trivial	CC:	dewijones92, djm
Priority:	P5
Version:	8.5p1
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux

Description dewi jones 2021-03-21 19:45:19 AEDT

The man page says this:
The bind_address of “localhost” indicates that the listening port be bound for local use only, while an empty address or ‘*’ indicates that the port should be available from all interfaces.

However each of the following commands results in a different interface binding
./ssh -D 1337 -vvvv -C -N  dewi@192.168.1.1
tcp   LISTEN    0      128                                             127.0.0.1:1337                0.0.0.0:*      users:(("ssh",pid=75605,fd=5)) uid:1000 ino:336020 sk:474 <->  
                                               

./ssh -D *:1337 -vvvv -C -N  dewi@192.168.1.1
tcp   LISTEN    0      128                                               0.0.0.0:1337                0.0.0.0:*      users:(("ssh",pid=74357,fd=4)) uid:1000 ino:320497 sk:464 <-> 

So many the documentation should be different? or the code?
Many thanks

Comment 1 Damien Miller 2021-03-22 09:25:17 AEDT

You're missing this critical sentence, which comes immediately before:

> By default, the local port is bound in accordance with
> the GatewayPorts setting

Comment 2 dewi jones 2021-03-23 19:12:16 AEDT

ah nice catch.
But surely the following two statements contradict eachother? 

> The bind_address of “localhost” indicates that the listening port be > > bound for local use only, while an empty address or ‘*’ indicates that > the port should be available from all interfaces.

> By default, the local port is bound in accordance with the GatewayPorts setting.

An empty address' behaviour is governed by the second statement and is not necessarily "available from all interfaces"

Many thanks