Updating the Git protocol for SHA-256

Posted Jun 22, 2020 18:08 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304)
In reply to: Updating the Git protocol for SHA-256 by NYKevin
Parent article: Updating the Git protocol for SHA-256

You can tunnel anything over ssh, but the git protocol is meant for *anonymous* fetching -- and there is no such thing as unpassworded anonymous guest ssh access :)

Dumb HTTP doesn't require a server -- it only needs an HTTP server that can serve files. It's much slower and transfers a lot more than the smart protocol, but if you need it you really need it. Like git bundles, it's useful getting stuff to/from networkologically constrained environments.

Updating the Git protocol for SHA-256

Posted Jun 23, 2020 2:10 UTC (Tue) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (4 responses)

"there is no such thing as unpassworded anonymous guest ssh access" doesn't appear to be true:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/583141/passwordless-and-k...
https://singpolyma.net/2009/11/anonymous-sftp-on-ubuntu/

PS: branchable.com allows anonymous git:// pushes to wikis.

http://ikiwiki.info/tips/untrusted_git_push/
https://ikiwiki-hosting.branchable.com/todo/anonymous_git...

Updating the Git protocol for SHA-256

Posted Jun 23, 2020 7:20 UTC (Tue) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] (2 responses)

That's not really anonymous ssh, it's just ssh with a publicly known user name and password (in this case "anonymous" and "").

Updating the Git protocol for SHA-256

Posted Jun 23, 2020 12:19 UTC (Tue) by dezgeg (subscriber, #92243) [Link]

There is the "none" authentication method that can be used. E.g. "ssh nethack@alt.org" seems to use that. I suppose then the only thing needed is configuring the SSH server to ignore the username.

Updating the Git protocol for SHA-256

Posted Jun 25, 2020 9:09 UTC (Thu) by grawity (subscriber, #80596) [Link]

Well, if the password is actually empty, at least OpenSSH will outright let you skip password-based authentication – no password prompts to be shown. I have seen actual Git and Hg servers which use this (if I remember correctly, the OpenSolaris Hg repository used to be served exactly this way).

Sure you could argue that you still need a known username, but that can be simply included in the git+ssh:// URL (like people already do with git@github.com).

(Still, even if you had to press Enter at a blank password prompt, that's how CVS pserver used to work and everyone accepted it as "anonymous access" all the same.)

Updating the Git protocol for SHA-256

Posted Jul 8, 2020 19:28 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

OK, you live and learn: git:// allows pack reception! I clearly never read that part of the git-daemon manpage :)