I'd like to put in my two cents on this issue: I find the current behaviour slow and also somewhat annoying, and would urge this bug be addressed. In fact, I think it is serious enough for a fix to get through the freeze and into squeeze.
My logic follows. The remote-machine completion (a) is excruciating slow most of the time, and (b) interferes with completion of local filenames which is what I pushed <TAB> for about 99% of the time. Unless there is some way to set a 500ms timeout on the network part of the rsync completion, I would urge a change to the package to have rsync complete local filenames only: no local hostname completion, no remote filename completion. Maybe there could be an easy-to-set flag to turn on remote completion, for those who so desire. (Remote filename completion after the colon has been typed would be sort-of okay, but even that is a bit slow and really should have a stringent timeout mechanism. And is also not always what I want: typically I construct a remote target filename out of bits and pieces of local filenames, and would in fact find local completion more useful even when typing a string that will be used as a remote filename.) It is also interesting to note that the current remote completion policy is a potential security problem, as it can cause ssh to make credential-passing connections to remote hosts without the user knowing about it. This leaks information about what the user has typed, complete with typos, via both DNS and, when hostnames resolve, unsuccessful SSH connection attempts. It also allows denial of service attacks, by disrupting the above mechanisms. The current completion also often gets things plain wrong, as in: $ rsync --rsh=s<TAB> scriptng.local: sonja-laptop.local: source5ng.local: Here my shell freezes for an excruciatingly long time $ rsync --rsh= <TAB> [[[ SEVEN SECOND DELAY GOES HERE ]]] $ rsync --rsh= <TAB><TAB> [[[ FIFTEEN SECOND DELAY GOES HERE ]]] ::1: hmm.ps online-freq.tex arrakis.local: hmm.tex pandora.local: buket-laptop.local: ip6-allnodes: piggy.local: civilian-implications.local: ip6-allrouters: port-kdr: corti.local: ip6-localhost: port-kdr.hamilton.local: CVS/ ip6-localnet: port-kdr.local: fe00::0: ip6-loopback: PRIZE-WINNING-TEXT ff00::0: ip6-mcastprefix: robocup-laptop.local: ff02::1: karumbu-2.local: rosemary.local: ff02::2: localhost: scriptng.local: hmm.aux Makefile sonja-laptop.local: hmm.dvi mars.local: source5ng.local: hmm.log matrix-calculus.tex vahid-laptop.local: hmm.pdf naorobocup-laptop.local: This is another example of what I do not think anyone wants: $ ls m* matrix-calculus.tex $ rsync --verbose m<TAB> $ rsync --verbose ma<TAB> mars.local: matrix-calculus.tex Do people care about a visitor's laptop connected to the local network that happens to be named "mars"? Should its presence corrupt and delay local filename completion? I'd say: no. --Barak. -- Barak A. Pearlmutter Hamilton Institute & Dept Comp Sci, NUI Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland http://www.bcl.hamilton.ie/~barak/ _______________________________________________ Bash-completion-devel mailing list Bash-completion-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/bash-completion-devel