Feature request, short synopsis: Enable continuation with '\' (backslash) in /etc/ssh/sshd_config. Rationale: Analogous to Apache's and other configuration files, it would be nice if long config lines in, e.g., sshd_config, could be split up. Example: AllowUsers user1@host1.somewhere.com user1@host2.somewhere.com \ user2@host1.somewhere.com user2@host3.somewhere.com etc. This is especially handy when (remotely) logged in on a 80x24 char tty and when doing screen copy & pastes on 80col tty's because some terminal emulators insert a \n even for wrapped lines at col. 80.
i don't know if this should be wontfix or future.
WONTFIX - you can avoid long lines by using multiple AllowUsers directives as each gets added to the list. E.g. your example could be written: AllowUsers user1@host1.somewhere.com user1@host2.somewhere.com AllowUsers user2@host1.somewhere.com user2@host3.somewhere.com
Hmmm, I've created a few ProxyCommand pipes that wouldn't fit into 80 characters, and it wouldn't really make sense to have multiple ProxyCommand options. (are they piped together? &&'d? should I need to create a file and sh -c it?) \ as a line extension mechanism has a decent amount of precedent -- I think it's been around since bourne shell -- and might make some configuration files easier to read. The main cost I see is that, as far as I know, there's not a mode to make grep aware of the backslash. That would mean $ grep AllowUsers /etc/sshd/sshd_config would return only the first line of users allowed. So: Is it better to have something more usable and more standard for users to enter configurations into, or is it better to be compatible with per-line parsing systems? I'm not really sure. We've already sacrificed line independence -- a group of options can be encapsulated by a pattern match; the above grep would match all patterns equally. Damien -- what's your reasoning for disliking \ notation, out of curiosity? --Dan
It adds complexity where it is not required. OpenSSH has a simple line-at-a-time config parser, it doesn't need to be more complicated.
Mass change of RESOLVED bugs to CLOSED