PuTTY semi-bug pageant-dirhandle

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summary: Pageant keeps open handles on removeable media
class: semi-bug: This might or might not be a bug, depending on your precise definition of what a bug is.
fixed-in: 2005-03-01 (0.58) (0.59) (0.60) (0.61) (0.62) (0.63) (0.64)

We've had a couple of reports (e.g. on comp.security.ssh) that the Pageant process tends to keep hold of a directory handle to the directory of the last key loaded via the file selection GUI.

This causes trouble for people who keep keys on removeable media such as USB memory sticks, as Windows won't let them unmount and remove the device.

The following workarounds are said to work:

Load, or attempt to load, a second (dummy) key from somewhere else such as a fixed drive using the file selection GUI.
Don't use the file selection GUI at all - pass the path to the key on the Pageant command line.

We don't believe that the Pageant code itself keeps handles on anything particularly, so we suspect that the file selection GUI is keeping a handle behind our backs. The workarounds above bear out this hypothesis.

Update, 2005-02-28 (JTN): I've implemented a wrapper to GetOpenFileName() which maintains a separate CWD for the file requester and for the process as a whole (which should appear in snapshots >=r5413), so this should be fixed now. I haven't tested it with anything that objects to having a process in a particular directory, nor with anything potentially awkward like UNCs, but the docs suggest it should work. (A simpler solution would have been to use OFN_NOCHANGEDIR, but that would have changed the UI behaviour.)

Audit trail for this semi-bug.

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(last revision of this bug record was at 2005-02-28 02:40:43 +0000)