Yes.  I think it makes sense to combine this issue with
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bzr-explorer/+bug/430311 where John said
essentially the same thing and more.

~M



On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 4:37 AM, Alexander Belchenko <email address hidden> wrote:

> See also https://bugs.launchpad.net/bzr-explorer/+bug/430311
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/622011
>
> Title:
>  wish: persistent client-side per-branch authentication
>
> Status in Bazaar Version Control System:
>  Invalid
> Status in Bazaar Explorer:
>  Confirmed
> Status in Qt frontend for Bazaar:
>  Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
>
>  There may already be a better solution for this.  I'd like to know.
>  Consider this wish a topic for discussion.
>
>  Bzr 2.2 and earlier appear to open a separate connection for every ssh
>  operation on a remote branch.  These connections become particularly
>  noticeable when a GUI client like Bazaar Explorer is used, because
>  most people can click icons faster than they can type full commands.
>  For example, just "opening" the working tree of an existing checkout
>  invokes four short-lived ssh sessions.  Now get a 'log' and do
>  'annotate' a few times.  You get the idea.  Lots of ssh connections
>  hitting the same credentials.
>
>  Here's why it matters.  IP-specific tools like fail2ban may not be
>  much use against DDoS.  So some professional paranoids (like my IT
>  department) also throttle ssh connection requests, regardless of
>  whether they succeed or fail.  I just found out that if my department
>  firewall sees more than 20 *total* inbound ssh connection requests in
>  a minute, our firewall locks out *all* ssh connections for ten
>  minutes.   What a pain!  But I don't control security, and those guys
>  have a job to do which is just as important as mine.  I tried to
>  explain to them that this is a *guaranteed* DoS, because all someone
>  has to do to shut down *all* of our ssh traffic is hit us with 20 ssh
>  requests every ten minutes.  They gave me a dirty look and I left.  :)
>
>  This is not theoretical.  It saw it happen today on a test box while I
>  was using bzr explorer.  I'm going to have to be careful not to annoy
>  those IT guys.  It probably could be avoided if every command which
>  can accept a location could also accept an option to use an existing
>  connection if it exists and leave the connection open if it has to
>  open one.  Of course, there should be a way to drop all open
>  connections.  And the connection should be set on a per-location or
>  per-branch basis, since multiple locations might be in use at once.
>
>  Some people might object to the idea of leaving a connection open.
>  But it's no more rude than leaving a ssh login terminal open for
>  hours.  And the IT guys would rather kill a few stale connections than
>  figure out how to deal with a flood of short-lived ones which look
>  like something they want to stop.  My problem might go away, now that
>  I've pointed out that the ssh throttle is more likely to hurt them
>  than help them.  But until they do something smarter, I will be
>  thinking more before clicking.
>
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