What steps will reproduce the problem?

1. Create a file with some hosts hosts e.g. [soham@server.dc tmp]$ cat /tmp/servers aaron.dev bvanevery.dev

2. Create an identity file readable by current user, e.g. [soham@server.dc tmp]$ ll /tmp/tmp.rkWOetj414 -rw------- 1 soham soham 1674 Oct 14 12:21 /tmp/tmp.rkWOetj414

3. Run pssh on them with any command, pass parameters which bypass strict hostkey verification and also pass in the identity file and notice the error e.g.:

[soham@server.dc tmp]$ /usr/bin/pssh -i -v -h /tmp/servers -O UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -O StrictHostKeyChecking=no -O IdentityFile=/tmp/tmp.rkWOetj414 "uptime" [1] 20:59:46 [FAILURE] aaron.dev Exited with error code 255 Stderr: Permission denied. Please create SSH keys or use the -A option to provide a password. Host key verification failed. [2] 20:59:46 [FAILURE] bvanevery.dev Exited with error code 255 Stderr: Permission denied. Please create SSH keys or use the -A option to provide a password. Host key verification failed.

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

See above for output that I see. I expect to bypass host key verification, like it happens in usual ssh e.g.

[soham@server.dc tmp]$ ssh -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o IdentityFile=/tmp/tmp.rkWOetj414 aaron.dev "uptime" Warning: Permanently added 'aaron.dev,10.8.10.140' (RSA) to the list of known hosts. 21:01:42 up 217 days, 10:37, 0 users, load average: 0.21, 0.12, 0.04

[soham@server.dc tmp]$ cat ~/.ssh/known_hosts | grep aaron.dev [soham@server.dc tmp]$

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?

pssh-2.1.1, x86_64 GNU/Linux, 2.6.18-194.el5 #1 SMP

ssh -V : OpenSSH_5.3p1-hpn13v7, OpenSSL 0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 01 Jul 2008

Please provide any additional information below.

1. If I do not pass the IdentityFile, it does not cause this problem, but it doesn't seem to respect the UserKnownHostsFile either:

[soham@server.dc tmp]$ /usr/bin/pssh -i -v -h /tmp/servers -O UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -O StrictHostKeyChecking=no "uptime" [1] 20:59:21 [SUCCESS] aaron.dev 20:59:12 up 217 days, 10:34, 0 users, load average: 0.02, 0.07, 0.03 Stderr: Warning: Permanently added 'aaron.dev,10.8.10.140' (RSA) to the list of known hosts. [2] 20:59:21 [SUCCESS] bvanevery.dev 20:59:12 up 110 days, 20:00, 0 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00 Stderr: Warning: Permanently added 'bvanevery.dev,10.8.10.172' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.

2. Order of ssh-options doesn't matter

Please ignore this. It seems -O is not a multi-value argument and only the last one is picked up.

Hmm. You should be able to specify it multiple times, so if this doesn't work, I think it's a bug. I'll look at it later and try to reproduce it.

Thanks for quick reply.

I have a patch (attached). Works for both command line and environment variable PSSH_OPTIONS. Please comment?

This patch probably breaks backward compatibility with PSSH_OPTIONS env var. Wondering what you think. Thanks.

The environment variables definitely complicate things. Anyway, thanks for posting a patch. I'll try to look at it as soon as I can.

Sorry for the delay. I've applied the patch with a few modifications as commit 735985. In particular, I left out the ability for the PSSH_OPTIONS environment variable to have multiple options because I'm worried that there might be some legitimate ssh option containing a colon character. In general, I hope people will use the command-line options when they need this. Anyway, let me know if you have any thoughts or if you see any problems. I plan on releasing a version 2.2 sometime this week that will include this fix. Thanks for your help.

I'm going to mark this as fixed for now. Please reopen if you see any problems with the fix. Thanks.