Hi, I am having a weird problem.

You see. I have setup a Debian box with a global IP address with sshd running.
I am using a firewall but I have opened port 22 for SSH connection from anywhere.

I can login with SSH without any problems, but when I try to login with sftp, it will just "hang" there after I enter the password.

I have this line in my /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Since it gives me a password prompt so I guess the connection is established, but it just doesn't response after I give it my password.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

Does your sftp-server executable have the right permissions for the user account you log in:

It must be something like this:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 27960 Nov 28 2004 /usr/lib/sftp-server

What my question is that can you see the deamon running by using
ps -ae | grep sftp

?

I have the exact problem with you . It goes through authentication but then fails.

When i try to connect with "SSH Secure File Transfer Client" it prompts after failure like this:

"File transfer server could not be started or it exited unexpectedly.
Exit value 0 was returned. Most likely the sftp-server is not in the path of the user on the server-side."

I changed PATH environment variable

PATH=$PATH:/usr/lib

Now it simply does not connect :'(

I tried to connect to the box on command-line and saw the error:

#sftp myname@myhostname
...
#Received message too long 1129730848


This was why my windows ssh transfer client was not connecting. This error is because my shell startup file was outputting text to inform human reader! Why is this a problem?

The answer is below:
http://www.snailbook.com/faq/sftp-corruption.auto.html
"
scp2/sftp and sftp-server use a special file-transfer protocol, which they speak over this SSH session. The protocol is in fact based on the same packet protocol used by SSH.

In order for this to work, the SSH session must be "clean" — that is, it must have on it only information transmitted by the programs at either end. What often happens, though, is that there are statements in either the system or per-user shell startup files on the server (.bashrc, .profile, /etc/csh.cshrc, .login, etc.) which output text messages on login, intended to be read by humans (like fortune, echo "Hi there!", etc.). Such code should only produce output on interactive logins, when there is a tty attached to standard input. If it does not make this test, it will insert these text messages where they don't belong: in this case, polluting the protocol stream between scp2/sftp and sftp-server. The first four bytes of the text gets interpreted as a 32-bit packet length, which will usually be a wildly large number, provoking the error message above.
"

There was an echo comment in my shell startup file (.bashrc). I comment it out and now i can make sftp connections both command-line and by my windows ssh file transfer client.

sorry koyi, i have partnered you thread but i hope my solution also solves your problem

Thanks levent.ozkan!!!

This line helped me solve my problem.

Well, I don't have any line on my .login or .cshrc to output text to the console, but I have some tricks in it to change the shell at login(Ya, I know I should change my shell forever with chsh but there are some problems that prevent me from doing that...). After I removed those lines, I can log into a sftp session without any problems.

Thanks!!!

Ya it did!!!

Thanks again.
Hope this thread helps the others, too.

I'm having trouble connecting securely to my linux box - I'm using FileZilla on XP to connect through port 22 but I get the following messages

I can connect via the command line -> sftp steve@x.x.x.x

I can't see any echo statements in my .bashrc file so I'm totally stumped

any ideas ?

Thanks

hmm never mind, I used a program called WinSCP and it managed to login fine by sftp

Hi levent.ozkan,

Thanks for helping us solve this problem!!!

Your help was much appreciated.

Thank you.

Removing the echos from a script my .bashrc called worked - Thank you!

I had to register to thank levent.ozkan. Even in 2018, your post from 2005 is still relevant!!

Been banging my head of the wall as a bunch of students could no longer copy files via mobaxterm. After getting them to try the another ssh client, I got an error message that on a google search brought me here!

Turns out a lectuer asked them to put echo comments in their .bashrc file. Commenting out this echo statements fixed this very annoying problem.

Thanks again.

I also had to register to thank levent.ozkan. Even in 2020, your post from 2005 is still relevant and worked for me but I found an alternate solution before this one.
The alternate solution is from here:
https://www.digitalocean.com/communi...om-sftp-server

For a UX ssh daemon - look at the (/etc/ssh/) sshd_config file.

If you are having problems with hung logins, after a successful authentication, and have this setting in the config file:
Subsystem sftp /usr/lib/openssh/sftp-server

try changing it to:
Subsystem sftp internal-sftp

In my case, using the Filezilla debug setting and looking in the server-side /var/log/syslog and .../auth.log files I could see the authentication complete ok.
Then the sessions would hang.
In my case on a LinuxLite (Debian/Ubuntu) system, a symptom was seen from the Console-lit daemon - sample lines from syslog file:
udev-acl.ck[3131]: g_slice_set_config: assertion 'sys_page_size == 0' failed
console-kit-daemon[1659]: console-kit-daemon[1659]: GLib-CRITICAL: Source ID 60 was not found when attempting to remove it

I'd never seen that internal-sftp setting mentioned before in docs, but it *is* in the sshd_config man page.

Hope this helps.

Alex