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.
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
> 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.
Honestly every developer needs to increase those default limits, they are too low for modern development... So you are just crippling them and a proof of that is they keep getting this error while in their regular workflow
I don't even hit 256 on my desktop with a shitton of things open and 75 firefox sandbox processes, much less on a remote server. What in heaven's name are you doing to cross 256?
Honestly I think this thread has just devolved to HPC admins vs people who don't understand how shared multiuser sytems work cause they've been stuck on a laptop for too long to remember.
> Honestly every developer needs to increase those default limits, they are too low for modern development...
The users can develop on >100 compute nodes, but choose not to bother doing any kind of forwarding/proxying/jumping to them and just do stuff on the login nodes.
If they can't be bothered to do a "ssh -J …" then it's on them. The resources are there.
danielklnstein · · focus · HN ↗
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.
godelski · · focus · HN ↗
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
throw0101a · · focus · HN ↗
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.
drowsspa · · focus · HN ↗
eqvinox · · focus · HN ↗
(Also this isn't a default limit.)
godelski · · focus · HN ↗
Too low? 256 reads as *pretty* generous to me.
bitfilped · · focus · HN ↗
throw0101a · · focus · HN ↗
The users can develop on >100 compute nodes, but choose not to bother doing any kind of forwarding/proxying/jumping to them and just do stuff on the login nodes.
If they can't be bothered to do a "ssh -J …" then it's on them. The resources are there.