Re: [sshmenu] Transferring SSHMenu Configuration from one machine to another

[Grant M. <gr...@mc...>]

Hi David

So, to summarise, you can ssh to a host manually, but if you try to
connect using SSHMenu then you can't connect?  That's very odd.

At first, I suspected a problem with you private key setup but if that
was the case you couldn't connect from a shell prompt either.  Then I
suspected a problem with your SSH agent but if that was the case, it
should still work, but with a prompt for your passphrase.

The only thing that's different when ssh is invoked from SSHMenu is the
environment but even that *should* be the same since multiple
gnome-terminal windows all use the same process and ssh will inherit its
environment from gnome-terminal.

There isn't any log to look at because SSHMenu just hands everything off
to gnome-terminal - which doesn't support logging.

You could try running the standalone sshmenu-gnome app from a terminal
window.  Any STDERR or STDOUT messages will go to your terminal.  I
strongly suspect there won't be any though.  Probably all the diagnostic
output is sent to the terminal window just before it closes :-(

Another suggestion is to edit /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/gnome-sshmenu.rb to add
some diagnostics.  Look for the definition of the 'build_window_command'
method and add a line to display the command in an alert box, like this:

      command += ' -e ' + shell_quote("sh -c #{shell_quote(ssh_cmnd)}")
      alert("About to run: #{command}")
      return command + ' &';
    end

Then, try running that command manually and see what you get.

Cheers
Grant


On Sun, 2008-05-18 at 00:27 -0400, David Ehrlich wrote:
> I'm migrating from Ubuntu 7.10 to Ubuntu 8.04.  For a number of
> reasons, I've created a brand new Ubuntu 8.04 installation on a new
> physical machine.  I've installed SSHMenu from the repositories and
> I've copied over the .sshemenu file from my home machine.  (I also
> copied the "gnome-telnetmenu.rb" file I created from the case-study
> described here:
> http://sshmenu.sourceforge.net/articles/sshtelnetmenu.html.)
> 
> When I click on the SSHMenu panel applet on the 8.04 machine, it
> displays the list of "Host Connection Details" titles as I had defined
> them in my 7.10 environment, so everything looks ok.  However, when I
> attempt to launch one of those sessions, I see a window "blink" and
> immediately disappear.  
>
> I see the same behavior if I use the "Test" button on the "Host
> Connection Details" dialog.  If I take the Hostname value from a
> random "Host Connection Details" definition and use it with ssh from
> the command line, it works.
> 
> How can I troubleshoot this?  I've been looking for a log file, but I
> haven't found it.  Am I missing something simple?
> 
> Thanks,
> --David