Bug#571613: openssh: tty allocation is not properly documented

[Vincent Lefevre <vincent@vinc17.net>]

Package: openssh
Version: 1:5.3p1-2
Severity: minor

It seems that by default (i.e. without -t or -T ssh option), tty
allocation is done only when one doesn't provide a command. If
the user provides a command, no tty allocation occurs by default:

ypig:~> ssh localhost echo \$TERM

ypig:~> ssh -t localhost echo \$TERM
xterm-debian
Connection to localhost closed.

This behavior is not documented in the ssh/sshd man pages.

In the ssh man page, I can only see:

  If a pseudo-terminal has been allocated (normal login session), the
  user may use the escape characters noted below.

but this is very ambiguous (what is a "normal login session"?).
Also, I wonder whether there's a difference between "pseudo-tty"
and "pseudo-terminal"; the man page should be consistent.

The sshd man page has:

  command="command"
    Specifies that the command is executed whenever this key is used
    for authentication.  The command supplied by the user (if any) is
    ignored.  The command is run on a pty if the client requests a
    pty; otherwise it is run without a tty. [...]

but this is just documentation about command="...".

-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.30-2-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=POSIX, LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO8859-1 (charmap=ISO-8859-1)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash