Would it be possible to put the directories holding the ssh-agent's socket to some other location than /tmp? I am asking, because on a highly frequented system, those directories clutter-up /tmp significantly. Maybe /var/run or /var/spool/sockets would be a more appropriate place for them? Or would you consider using /tmp/.ssh-xxxx instead so that at least the directories are not visible all the time, like X11 and others do it? Thanks!
/tmp is the most portable world-writable location. as to hiding them with dot, i just don't see strong justification for this.
Is there any strong justification for _not_ hiding them with a dot? Or could you add a configure option (or run-time configure option) that let's me change this without having to patch the source code?
Because you end up with worthless options and feature creep. There are too many options as it is right now.
Changing the name of the /tmp/ssh-xxxx directory to /tmp/.ssh-xxx won't require any options to be added but it would still solve my problem ... somewhat. Would you please consider doing that then?
why is it a problem if they are visible? they should be. apart from this, changing the name might break existing scripts.
Well, it is a problem because on a multi-user system there are _hundreds_ of them. And it's not only hundreds of ssh-agent sockets, it's hundreds of Emacs server sockets, ORBit sockets, X11 sockets and so on and so forth. Once the system has been up and running for a few weeks, you cannot possibly read the output from a "ls /tmp" without getting a 23" screen first ...
ssh-agent supports the -a option to specify a socket path. Tell you users.
Mass change of RESOLVED bugs to CLOSED