`keyfile` config is ignored by `InteractiveSSHClient` SSH config `IdentityFile` entries used instead, causing unrelated keys to be tried

[gabrielhamalwa]

Labels: bug

dvc-ssh version: 4.3.0
asyncssh version: 2.23.0

Description

When keyfile is configured for an SSH remote, DVC correctly passes it to asyncssh.connect() as client_keys. However, when the key requires a passphrase (triggering the interactive auth path), InteractiveSSHClient.public_key_auth_requested() ignores options.client_keys and instead reads IdentityFile entries directly from the SSH config file:

# dvc_ssh/client.py — public_key_auth_requested()
config = options.config
client_keys = cast("Sequence[FilePath]", config.get("IdentityFile", ()))

This means any IdentityFile entries inherited from a Host * block in ~/.ssh/config are tried as well, including keys that are unrelated to the configured remote (e.g. a git commit signing key). This produces unexpected passphrase prompts for keys the user never intended to use with DVC.

Steps to reproduce

1. Have two keys in ~/.ssh/config under Host *, e.g. id_ed25519 (auth) and id_ed25519_signing (git signing key)
2. Configure a DVC SSH remote with keyfile pointing to only id_ed25519:

   dvc remote modify --local myremote keyfile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519

3. Run dvc pull

Expected: only ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 is tried; no prompt for id_ed25519_signing

Actual: both keys are tried; user is prompted for the passphrase of id_ed25519_signing

Root cause

public_key_auth_requested() sources its key list from options.config.get("IdentityFile") (the parsed SSH config) rather than from options.client_keys (the explicit client_keys argument passed to asyncssh.connect()). The explicitly configured keyfile is therefore only respected for the initial non-interactive auth attempt, not for the interactive passphrase-prompting fallback.

Suggested fix

In public_key_auth_requested(), prefer options.client_keys when it is set, falling back to SSH config only when no explicit keys are configured:

# Prefer explicitly configured client_keys over SSH config discovery
client_keys = list(options.client_keys) if options.client_keys else None
if not client_keys:
    client_keys = cast("Sequence[FilePath]", config.get("IdentityFile", ()))
if not client_keys:
    client_keys = [
        os.path.expanduser(os.path.join("~", ".ssh", path))
        for path, cond in _DEFAULT_KEY_FILES
        if cond
    ]

Workaround

Remove unintended keys from Host * in ~/.ssh/config so they are not picked up by asyncssh's config parsing.