Bug#1024568: openssh-client: ignores $HOME environment variable

Control: forwarded -1 https://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3048

On Mon, Nov 21, 2022 at 02:54:13PM +0100, Gabor Kiss wrote:
> I tried to run ssh client in a test environment with files (known_hosts, config etc.)
> from other than my usual /home/kissg/.ssh/ directory.
> So after reading the docs I just modified the HOME environment variable to /tmp/kissg.
> However the program henceforward used the original /home/kissg/.ssh/.
> 
> Checking the source I found that - in contrast to the man page - ssh client does not care
> with $HOME(*) but always uses home dir retrieved from passwd file.
> (So I have to give every file in the command line one by one.)
> 
> *: More precisely strace shows that ssh tried to open "/tmp/kissg/.ssh/config_autotest" once:
> newfstatat(AT_FDCWD, "/tmp/kissg/.ssh/config_autotest", 0x7ffda93d3cf0, AT_SYMLINK_NOFOLLOW) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
> That is quite funny because this file name does not occur in the source.

The most current upstream bug for this is probably either
https://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3048 or
https://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3470, and those explain the
historical reasons why the design is the way it is.  I don't think
there's anything we can sensibly do in Debian about this, so I'll just
mark this as forwarded upstream.