Re: half-package of autossh

[Christopher Allan Webber]

Christopher Allan Webber writes:

> Hello all!  I got autossh packaged, at least in theory.  I use this all
> the time when on Debian.
>
> And yet, though the binary appears on my profile, it seems to do nothing
> in Guix.  I'm not sure why this is.
>
> I should be able to do:
>
>   autossh fencepost.gnu.org
>
> and it should work, but instead I just see the help text printed.
>
> Any ideas?  Or if anyone wanting to finish a mysteriously busted
> package, have at it.

Well, guess what!  It turns out my patch was just fine.  It turns out
what you need to do is:

  autossh -M 0 fencepost.gnu.org

It appears Debian must have applied a patch (I haven't verified this)
that makes "-M 0" the default.  Otherwise this works just fine.

I've actually been using it for a while but forgot to contribute it.

Here's the updated patch!  If people are ok with it, I'd like to push
it.

>From c718ca3986750c255a58b87d9e6805e56c1ffc72 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Christopher Allan Webber <address@hidden>
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2016 16:01:49 -0800
Subject: [PATCH] gnu: Add autossh.

* gnu/packages/ssh.scm (autossh): New variable.
---
 gnu/packages/ssh.scm | 28 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 28 insertions(+)

diff --git a/gnu/packages/ssh.scm b/gnu/packages/ssh.scm
index af5aae1..9c76f48 100644
--- a/gnu/packages/ssh.scm
+++ b/gnu/packages/ssh.scm
@@ -5,6 +5,7 @@
 ;;; Copyright © 2015, 2016 Efraim Flashner <address@hidden>
 ;;; Copyright © 2016 Leo Famulari <address@hidden>
 ;;; Copyright © 2016 Nicolas Goaziou <address@hidden>
+;;; Copyright © 2016 Christopher Allan Webber <address@hidden>
 ;;;
 ;;; This file is part of GNU Guix.
 ;;;
@@ -506,3 +507,30 @@ manipulating key files.")
 authentication with SSH's so-called @dfn{interactive keyboard password
 authentication}.")
     (license license:gpl2+)))
+
+(define-public autossh
+  (package
+    (name "autossh")
+    (version "1.4e")
+    (source
+     (origin
+       (method url-fetch)
+       (uri (string-append
+             "http://www.harding.motd.ca/autossh/autossh-";
+             version ".tgz"))
+       (sha256
+        (base32 "0mlicw28vq2jxa0jf0dys5ja75v0fxpjavlq9dpif6bnknji13ly"))))
+    (build-system gnu-build-system)
+    (arguments `(#:tests? #f)) ; There is no "make check" or anything similar
+    (inputs `(("openssh" ,openssh)))
+    (synopsis "Automatically restart SSH sessions and tunnels")
+    (description "autossh is a program to start a copy of ssh and 
+monitor it, restarting it as necessary should it die or stop 
+passing traffic. The idea is from rstunnel (Reliable SSH Tunnel), 
+but implemented in C.")
+    (home-page "http://www.harding.motd.ca/autossh/";)
+    (license
+     ;; Why point to a source file?  Well, all the individual files have a
+     ;; copy of this license in their headers, but there's no seprate file
+     ;; with that information.
+     (license:non-copyleft "file://autossh.c"))))
-- 
2.10.1