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Comments on Mac SSH sends some environment variables by default

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Mac SSH sends some environment variables by default

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Why does the default SSH client behavior for MacOS send LANG and LC_* environment variables to the server? If I consult man ssh_config, it says

SendEnv

[…] The default is not to send any environment variables.

Why would Apple decide to override it? (And if so, why leave the documentation with its original text?)

This snippet is at the bottom of /etc/ssh/ssh_config:

Host *
    SendEnv LANG LC_*
ssh macOS
posted 8 months ago
8mo ago
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Michael‭
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2 comment threads

You may be misunderstanding the meaning of "default" here (1 comment)
Not unique to Apple (2 comments)
You may be misunderstanding the meaning of "default" here
Kamil Maciorowski‭ wrote 3 days ago
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"why leave the documentation with its original text?" – Because "the default" the manual talks about will be applied if there is no SendEnv in the config at all. Any SendEnv inside /etc/ssh/ssh_config is not "the default" in this context, merely by its existence.

For comparison: in Debian the manual states "that the Debian openssh-client package sets several options as standard in /etc/ssh/ssh_config which are not the default in ssh(1)", then it explicitly mentions SendEnv LANG LC_* as one of them. So it calls this "standard", not "the default", and where it explains SendEnv it says "the default is not to send any environment variables".

I note the manual does use the word "default" also to describe entries in config files ("more host-specific declarations should be given near the beginning of the file, and general defaults at the end"), so it's not as strict as it should be. No wonder you called the modified value "the default SSH client behavior" and got confused.