ssh user name completion

ssh user name completion

[Angelina Carlton]

Hello everyone,

I have several computers running various flavours of Debian GNU/Linux
On my server, (Debian stable)  I have installed the package zsh-beta:
zsh-beta  4.3.0-dev-2+20 A shell with lots of features (dev tree)

On my desktop, (Debian unstable) I also have zsh-beta:
zsh-beta  4.3.2-dev-1+20060928-1 A shell with lots of features (dev
tree)

in my ~/.zshrc on both machines:

#ssh completion
local _myhosts;
_myhosts=( ${${=${${(f)"$(cat {/etc/ssh_,~/.ssh/known_}hosts(|2)(N) /dev/null)"}%%[# ]*}//,/ }:#\!*}
${=${(f)"$(cat /etc/hosts(|)(N) <<EOF
(ypcat hosts 2>/dev/null))"}%%\#*} );
zstyle ':completion:*' hosts $_myhosts;

I got this code from a zshrc I found on the net, but i don't pretend to
understand how exactly it works, or even if it is the correct way to do
ssh conmpletion..

The problem is on the Debian Stable server, if I type:
ssh u<TAB>
the shell expands to:
ssh username@
then I type the first letter of the host and it expands that as well.
This is excellent behaviour and makes things very fast.

However on my Debian unstable computer, typing:
ssh u<TAB>
will just make the shell beep, as it seems not to know how to complete
the command. I have to manually type in the username@ string and then it
will complete the hostname for me.

Obviously I would like the version of zsh on Debian unstable to behave
(at least with respects to ssh completion) just like the version of zsh
on Debian stable. 

Does anyone know how to do this?
Thanks very much.

-- 
-----Angelina Carlton-----
orchid on irc.freenode.net
     brat@magma.ca
web:bzgirl.bakadigital.com
--------------------------

Re: ssh user name completion

[Peter Stephenson]

Angelina Carlton <brat@magma.ca> wrote:
> #ssh completion
> local _myhosts;
> _myhosts=( ${${=${${(f)"$(cat {/etc/ssh_,~/.ssh/known_}hosts(|2)(N) /dev/null)"}%%[# ]*}//,/ }:#\!*}
> ${=${(f)"$(cat /etc/hosts(|)(N) <<EOF
> (ypcat hosts 2>/dev/null))"}%%\#*} );
> zstyle ':completion:*' hosts $_myhosts;
> 
> I got this code from a zshrc I found on the net, but i don't pretend to
> understand how exactly it works, or even if it is the correct way to do
> ssh conmpletion..

You should find recent versions of zsh have this in by default.

> The problem is on the Debian Stable server, if I type:
> ssh u<TAB>
> the shell expands to:
> ssh username@
> then I type the first letter of the host and it expands that as well.
> This is excellent behaviour and makes things very fast.
> 
> However on my Debian unstable computer, typing:
> ssh u<TAB>
> will just make the shell beep, as it seems not to know how to complete
> the command. I have to manually type in the username@ string and then it
> will complete the hostname for me.

The code you show doesn't do anything special for user names.  The current
support built into the completion system adds any users stored in the
style "users", then any found by scanning the system's password database.
This doesn't appear to have changed recently.

Try setting a few user names for it to complete explicitly and see
if that works:

  zstyle ":completion:*" users arthur brenda charlie deirdre


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Re: ssh user name completion

[Angelina Carlton]

Peter Stephenson <pws@csr.com> writes:
>
> The code you show doesn't do anything special for user names.  The current
> support built into the completion system adds any users stored in the
> style "users", then any found by scanning the system's password database.
> This doesn't appear to have changed recently.
>
> Try setting a few user names for it to complete explicitly and see
> if that works:
>
>   zstyle ":completion:*" users arthur brenda charlie deirdre

Yes that works, thank you.
-- 
-----Angelina Carlton-----
orchid on irc.freenode.net
     brat@magma.ca
web:bzgirl.bakadigital.com
--------------------------

Re: ssh user name completion

[Peter Stephenson]

Angelina Carlton wrote:
> >   zstyle ":completion:*" users arthur brenda charlie deirdre
> 
> Yes that works, thank you.

Hmm... so it's not fundamentally broken... I don't know why it wouldn't
be able to query the operating system any more.

-- 
Peter Stephenson <p.w.stephenson@ntlworld.com>
Web page now at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/p.w.stephenson/