[BUG] Cannot find known_hosts file if username has whitespace on windows

[ysl2]

My known_hosts file locates in C:\Users\fa fa\.ssh\known_hosts. There is a whitespace on path (fa fa). I have modified your distant.nvim source code to fix this problem, so the distant.nvim plugin can work normally on my machine. But finally I traced that the plugin called the distant.exe package then the bug occured. I have no idea how to modify rust code format. Need help please :-) thanks a lot!

Click here to check git diff for distant.nvim

Bug occured below after running :DistantLaunch ssh://myname@example_host:22<CR>

[chipsenkbeil]

@ysl2 this is actually an issue with the ssh library we use, wezterm-ssh. You could try changing the backend from ssh2 to libssh and see if that fixes your problem. Otherwise we'd need a fix in wezterm-ssh! 😄

[ysl2]

By the way: The distant.nvim plugin conflicts with jbgutierrez/vim-better-comments
Beacuse of this code line:
https://github.com/chipsenkbeil/distant.nvim/blob/v0.2/lua/distant/autocmd.lua#L18
I removed the vim-better-comments plugin to solve this bug.

I solved this but with a llittle flaw.
At first I noticed your distant executable file contains settings ssh.user_known_hosts_files and ssh.identity_files

distant/src/cli/commands/manager/handlers.rs

Line 435 in 27dc577

.or_else(|| options.get("ssh.user_known_hosts_files"))

distant/src/cli/commands/manager/handlers.rs

Line 412 in 27dc577

.or_else(|| options.get("ssh.identity_files"))

I commented this line below, and directly inject a lua table contains settings into the command.connect() function on my nvim init.lua (and do the same thing in command.open()).

https://github.com/chipsenkbeil/distant.nvim/blob/d6e29ad8d877674f4c4b619b0275961081bc33f2/lua/distant/command.lua#L219

Also I linked my C:\Users\fa fa\.ssh\ folder to C:\Users\Public\.ssh\

cd C:\Users\Public
mklink /D .ssh "C:\Users\fa fa\.ssh"

This is the minimal nvim init.lua config:

-- NOTE: An example of local variable `hosts` defined by myself, it contains hosts information.
-- local hosts = {
--   {
--     args = { 'ssh://user1@111.222.333.444:22' },
--     opts = {
--       options = {
--         -- ['ssh.backend'] = 'libssh', -- No need to specify this. Just for example.
--         ['ssh.user_known_hosts_files'] = 'C:\\Users\\Public\\.ssh\\known_hosts',
--         ['ssh.identity_files'] = 'C:\\Users\\Public\\.ssh\\id_rsa'
--       }
--     }
--   },
--   {
--     args = { 'ssh://user2@127.0.0.1:2233' },
--     opts = {} -- Or leave it empty on Linux.
--   }
-- }
function DistantConnect(idx)
  require('distant.command').connect(hosts[idx])
end

function DistantOpen(path)
  require('distant.command').open({ args = { path }, opts = {} })
end

vim.keymap.set('n', '<Leader>dc', ':lua DistantConnect()<Left>')
vim.keymap.set('n', '<Leader>do', ":lua DistantOpen('')<Left><Left>")

It can work now with flaw, beacuse I exposed my private .ssh folder to another public place (which path doesn't contains whitespaces).

I don't think this is an elegant way to solve the problem, but it really can work on windows, espacially when the path contains whitespace. I won't set a whitespace username next time if I have a new computer or after reinstalling windows system, beacuse it's too annoying.

[chipsenkbeil]

Hm, this could be an issue at some point when CLI arguments are passed around, but I'm not sure at what point in the codebase it happens. Will leave this as a bug to solve at some point for the distant binary, to be revisited when I have a little more time to dig in.

Thanks for the detailed report and glad you found a workaround for the time being!