tab-completion of scp removes hostname

[Torsten Bronger]

If I use the auto-completion of bash with TAB, the hostname of the destination path is removed. Thus, I have

scp bob:/windows/T/daten/0_projekte/ACME

then I press TAB and get

scp /windows/T/daten/0_projekte/ACME01/

so the hostname "bob" was wrongly removed.

[Andreas Olsson (andol)]

What version of bash in which version of Ubuntu?

[Torsten Bronger (bronger)]

It's Ubuntu 8.10 desktop, Bash 3.2.39(1)-release.

However, I only experiance this behaviour if I login via ssh or use the text console. Under gnome-terminal, this issue doesn't occur.

My .profile and .bashrc only contain Python- and Nvidia-specific additions. Apart from them, I use vanilla Ubuntu profiles.

[YoBoY (yoboy-leguesh)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please answer these questions:

1- can you detail more precisely a use case, what you want to do, what you espected, what is the result of you actions?
2- your destination path is a local folder? if not how you manage the completion on it? and where is you source file/path ? (i don't use scp)
3- your hostname is your actual machine, a local pc, or a pc on the internet? have you put it in the /etc/hosts file or other file?

I tried to reproduce but can't understand how this is working. Tanks to make a use case i can reproduce with my non technical background.

I also move this bug to the bash-completion package because the scp completion is scripted in /etc/bash_completion and only work if it's loaded.

[Torsten Bronger (bronger)]

From my lab, I login into my home Ubuntu system in order to copy files with scp to my lab computer. For this, I use PuTTY on Windows to connect to my home machine. I see the Bash prompt.

Then I visit the folder with the files. My lab computer is called "bob". The full URL path I want to copy to is "bob:/windows/". So I enter "scp myfile.dat bob:/win" and press TAB.

After this, I see "scp myfile.dat /windows/". But I expect to see "scp myfile.dat bob:/windows/". So you see, the hostname was erroneously removed by tab completion. But you also see that Bash has successfully connected bob and has seen that there is the root folder "windows/".

As a workaround, I call "bash" immediately after having logged-in. So I call bash in bash. The child bash doesn't exhibit this behaviour for some reason.

[James Westby (james-w)]

Hi,

Could you please do

  echo $BASH_COMPLETION
  echo $BASH_COMPLETION_DIR

both when it works and when it doesn't work as expected.

Thanks,

James

[Torsten Bronger (bronger)]

Unfortunately, the output is the same in both cases:

bronger@wilson:~$ echo $BASH_COMPLETION
/etc/bash_completion
bronger@wilson:~$ echo $BASH_COMPLETION_DIR
/etc/bash_completion.d
bronger@wilson:~$ bash
bronger@wilson:~$ echo $BASH_COMPLETION
/etc/bash_completion
bronger@wilson:~$ echo $BASH_COMPLETION_DIR
/etc/bash_completion.d

(I checked whether the completion beheviour was different; it was.)

[Jerome Reybert (jreybert)]

This bug is being discussed in the red hat bugzilla too:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=444466

It seems to exist a conflict between the scp auto completion and the gvfs one. There are two solutions, waiting for a correction:
 - disable the gvfs autocompletion. For that, just add "return" at the top of the file /etc/bash_completion.d/gvfs-bash-completion.sh
 - remove the gvfs package

For both solution, the behaviour is effective only if I kill X (I don't know how to restart bash_completion).

[Torsten Bronger (bronger)]

I switched to Jaunty and can't reproduce the problem any more, sorry.

[James Westby (james-w)]

Hi,

Thanks for updating us on the status. I'm closing the bug as you
can't reproduce it now. Please re-open the bug if it occurs again.

Thanks,

James