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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. Joker_vD · · focus · HN ↗
        I don't think I've ever paid attention to a MotD on any of the servers I had a ssh access to... what do people put there?
        1. godelski · · focus · HN ↗

            > what do people put there?
          
            \033[1;31mCLEAN YOUR FUCKING DRIVE OR I'LL DO IT FOR YOU!\033[0m
          
          You know, typical admin stuff
          1. Joker_vD · · focus · HN ↗
            Ah, I see. Our admins typically understood that users were being given disk quotas precisely so that they could use that disk space, but that's probably not a universal stance.
            1. literalAardvark · · focus · HN ↗
              It's really not.

              Quotas mean "more than this is clearly too much" not "please use this space".

              In good times nobody minds, but in bad times when you just can't extend the drive you have to tell people off. Part of the job of making sure the system can continue to work for what you need it, under _real_ constraints.

              You may have to delete stuff, you may have to shut the server down to save power. You may have to limit clock speeds. It depends on the environment and "it really should work because it should be covered by next day on site warranty and you could download more ram" often doesn't apply.

              1. williamdclt · · focus · HN ↗
                > Quotas mean "more than this is clearly too much" not "please use this space".

                super tangential, but makes me think I never realised that "quota" can either be a lower or an upper bound depending on context

                1. shadowgovt · · focus · HN ↗
                  Back in the day, because the architecture was shared memory and cooperative multitasking, this is how MacOS applications declared their memory constraints.

                  Apps had a (recommended and then user-configurable) "Minimum memory" and "Preferred memory." The app would not launch if the OS couldn't give it the minimum. It would then give the app up to the preferred amount, if available, exclusively... This was in the era before virtual memory and paging, so there was no easy way to share memory across an application boundary.

                  This mean that savvy users with high-resource tasks knew you had to launch your apps in a certain order to get the architecture into the configuration to do their work.

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