bug#73052: emacs 30 ssh: couldn't find a proper `ls' command

bug#73052: emacs 30 ssh: couldn't find a proper `ls' command

[Christopher Howard]

Hi, I've recently started using emacs 30 which I compile from source. Something that broke in the switch from emacs 29->30 is I am not able to use tramp to ssh into any of my guix servers. I get this error

```
Debugger entered--Lisp error: (file-error "Couldn't find a proper `ls' command")
```

I reported this as an Emacs bug - 72861 - and based on the data I provided -- full backtrace, etc. -- they indicated it was a guix bug. They pointed me to guix bug 64534.

However, I tried adding the appropriate directory to tramp-remote-path (/run/current-system/profile/bin) and that did not work.

If I switch back to 29.4 then I can access my servers again normally through tramp.

Here is my system information:

```
christopher@theoden 
------------------- 
OS: Guix System x86_64 
Host: OptiPlex 9020 00 
Kernel: 5.15.161-gnu 
Uptime: 63 days, 19 hours, 14 mins 
Packages: 167 (guix-system), 251 (guix-user) 
Shell: bash 5.1.16 
Resolution: 1920x1080 
DE: GNOME 
Theme: Adwaita [GTK2/3] 
Icons: Adwaita [GTK2/3] 
Terminal: guix 
CPU: Intel i5-4570 (4) @ 3.600GHz 
GPU: AMD ATI Radeon HD 8490 / R5 235X OEM 
GPU: Intel HD Graphics 
Memory: 5038MiB / 15914MiB 
```

``` guix describe
Generation 143	Sep 03 2024 10:14:51	(current)
  guix 82174b2
    repository URL: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git
    branch: master
    commit: 82174b2742c2a59fd7959ba9acc80edd6f93d9f7
```

The emacs version I am testing is:

GNU Emacs 30.0.90 (build 5, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.24.41, cairo version 1.18.0) of 2024-09-03


-- 
📛 Christopher Howard
🚀 gemini://gem.librehacker.com
🌐 http://gem.librehacker.com

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bug#73052: emacs 30 ssh: couldn't find a proper `ls' command

[Christopher Howard]

I haven't been struggling with this issue for some months now. I can't remember exactly what I did, but I think the key was this tramp-own-remote-path option:

```
 '(tramp-remote-path
   '(tramp-own-remote-path tramp-default-remote-path "/bin" "/usr/bin"
                           "/sbin" "/usr/sbin" "/usr/local/bin"
                           "/usr/local/sbin" "/local/bin"
                           "/local/freeware/bin" "/local/gnu/bin"
                           "/usr/freeware/bin" "/usr/pkg/bin"
                           "/usr/contrib/bin" "/opt/bin" "/opt/sbin"
                           "/opt/local/bin" "/opt/homebrew/bin"
                           "/opt/homebrew/sbin"
                           "/run/current-system/profile/bin"))
```

-- 
Christopher Howard

bug#73052: emacs 30 ssh: couldn't find a proper `ls' command

[Jesse Millwood]

I'm having this problem as well but with emacs 29 on a foreign distro 
trying to tramp ssh connect to a GuixSD system. I have added the same 
paths to the "tramp-remote-path" but I get the same issue. I did notice 
that the docs for the "tramp-remote-path" mentions that it needs 
"getconf" first, otherwise it just uses /bin:/usr/bin :

Default Directories represent the list of directories given by
the command "getconf PATH".  It is recommended to use this
entry on head of this list, because these are the default
directories for POSIX compatible commands.  On remote hosts which
do not offer the getconf command, the value "/bin:/usr/bin" is
used instead.  This entry is represented in the list by the
special value tramp-default-remote-path.

The getconf utility doesn't seem to be available in Guix though.


Jesse