[dexterdog]

I really like stories like this where somebody was overly curious about something and instead of just reading about it, he takes it apart and puts it back together to gain the kind of knowledge you will never find in a book/blog post.

[vog]

> takes it apart and puts it back together to gain the kind of knowledge you will never find in a book/blog post.

Interestingly, the author still worked a lot with the docs (RFCs), not just with the software itself.

I believe this is important for any hands-on activity. Even though the documentation isn't your starting point, and may be too cumbersome and badly structured, sooner or later you should go back to them, now with more specific questions, picking out what you need.

[pavel_lishin]

I thought it was fairly discouraging that the docs weren't sufficient to get the author up and running with ssh; a lot of seemingly undocumented gotchas popped up.

[dexterdog]

Yeah, I would hope with a tool as critical as ssh the docs would be pretty good. Hopefully the author will contribute and it will get accepted.