-/* read from a socket with IO timeout. return the number of
- bytes read. If no bytes can be read then exit, never return
- a number <= 0 */
+/*
+ * Read from a socket with IO timeout. return the number of bytes
+ * read. If no bytes can be read then exit, never return a number <= 0.
+ *
+ * TODO: If the remote shell connection fails, then current versions
+ * actually report an "unexpected EOF" error here. Since it's a
+ * fairly common mistake to try to use rsh when ssh is required, we
+ * should trap that: if we fail to read any data at all, we should
+ * give a better explanation. We can tell whether the connection has
+ * started by looking e.g. at whether the remote version is known yet.
+ */