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VSCode's SSH Agent Is Bananas (2025)

310 points · 218 comments · Rapzid

  1. danielklnstein · · focus · HN ↗
    Missing a (2025)

    FYI VSCode's SSH Agent is a godsend for remote development - the "disadvantages" that Fly lists are part of its advantages. I've worked in several teams that have made extensive use of the extension, and it's never been an issue. You can restrict SSH access arbitrarily to ensure whatever security or access guardrails you need.

    1. godelski · · focus · HN ↗
      As a Linux user I've hated VSCode's ssh. There's lot of annoying things that make it harder to admin for. Like it doesn't pick up the MotD, preventing me from showing users important messages. I've found that it also doesn't reuse sessions (at least by default. TBF, neither does ssh) and I'll find that there's just dozens of open sessions over months from users. I literally had to write a script to boot people...

      It would be one thing if the plugin was just a wrapper and people were still expected to know ssh but the plugin abstracts away all that and is intended to make it a "use VSCode on remote machine" tool. So it needs to do more than just handle creds, otherwise it creates a divergent experience while making people think it's just ssh

      1. throw0101a · · focus · HN ↗
        > There's lot of annoying things that make it harder to admin for.

        It also (AIUI) tries to walk the entire file tree, so have fun with NFS (auto)mounts.

        It also amounts to letting off fork bombs: we set up limits for a maximum of 256 process per UID, and regularly get folks asking "what does this 'cannot fork' message mean?": it mean you're trying to DoS the system.

        1. astrange · · focus · HN ↗
          And it doesn't work on BSD, and fails in an opaque way when it tries.
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