fd0ssh(1)

💖 fd0ssh — the manual, but make it make sense 💖

okay bestie, so this page lives in the hxtools manual collection, section 1, and it's all about fd0ssh. it's short, it's sweet, it's giving "tiny utility, big job" energy. let's get into it 🫶

✨ Name ✨

fd0ssh — a pipe for password-over-stdin support to ssh 🌸

like, the whole entire personality of this program is: get a password into ssh when ssh really wants to ask for it on a terminal. no cap.

🎀 Syntax 🎀

fd0ssh mount_command

that's it. that's the whole vibe. one argument, mount_command, and off you go 💅

🦋 Description 🦋

okay so here's the tea ☕ — this is a wrapper for ssh which reads the password from stdin and sets things up so that ssh will recall the wrapper to get the password, which will be read from the parent process using a pipe. 🫶

literally the way it works is: you feed it the password on stdin, and the wrapper arranges for ssh to come back and call the wrapper again when it needs the password, and that read comes from the parent process through a pipe. iconic behaviour honestly. 🎀

it's used by pam_mount(8) to mount SSH-based filesystems, such as ccgfs and sshfs. so if you've ever automounted an sshfs thing at login and wondered "wait, how did the password get in there", this little guy is part of the answer. 🔥

ngl, this is a very small program doing one very specific thing, and that's exactly why it's cute. don't expect it to do anything else, bestie. 💀

🌈 See also 🌈

• hxtools(7) — the whole hxtools family, go say hi 👑

also, for the lore: idea by John S. Skogtvedt, http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/587 ✨

and that's the page!! 🎀 source is hxtools, version/date situation is 2008-04-06, and the page is fd0ssh(1) — so yeah, it's been serving this exact purpose since 2008 and it's still eating. periodt. 💅💖🦋