Re: Issues with multi-hop in TRAMP

[Michael Albinus <michael.albinus@gmx.de>]

Jordan Wilson <jordan.t.wilson@gmx.com> writes:

> Hi Michael,

Hi Jordan,

> On 2019-02-16 (Sat) at 09:51 (+0100), Michael Albinus <michael.albinus@gmx.de> wrote:
>> Have you tried sole "/plink:username@machine:"?
> They work fine. No problems connecting to that machine with plink.

Fine.

>> Do you use packages which keep information over Emacs sessions, like
>> recentf.el or desktop.el?
> I use recentf.el. It can see in `recentf-open-files' files retrieved
> using that multi-hop are labelled like
> "/sshx:username@machine2:/home/jordan/hello.txt"

Well, that's the problem. Multi-hop remote files, as you use them, are
called "ad-hoc". The reason is that this syntax is intended for the
moment, and not suited to survive Emacs sessions. Tramp reduces the file
name "/method1:host1|method2:host2:" to "/method2:host2", just for
convenience. The needed hop for host2 is kept internally during the
Emacs session.

When you open a new Emacs session, and recentf reads its initial file
with the shortened file name, this information is lost.

So you shall either declare multi-hop by means of
`tramp-default-proxies-alist' (see the Tramp manual, node "Multi-hops"),
or you shall set `tramp-save-ad-hoc-proxies' to t (see the Tramp manual,
node "Ad-hoc multi-hops"), which stores that information persistently.

Anyway, it is an error in recentf to store such shortened remote file
name, missing the ad-hoc multi-hop information. I will check, whether
this could be fixed.

(Maybe you write an Emacs bug report about, in order not to forget? I
cannot promise that I will work on this just now.)

> But even if that was somehow the cause, that doesn't
> explain why this issue appears in "emacs -Q".

Indeed, I also don't know what's up with "emacs -Q" here. To be
investigated as well.

> Regards,

Best regards, Michael.