SFTP 'Received message too long'

[EoinCar]

I've set up Cerberus SFTP server on a Windows XP. I use a command line interface on my MAC OS X to sftp into the Windows. Everything works fine, I can do all the usual pwd, cd, ls and what not. But when I cd into my 'Data' folder (which contains about 12,000 files) and try to print a list of all files to screen using 'ls' I get the error message 'Received message is too long <some number> and it cuts the connection. Funny thing is this problem does not manifest itself when I use just FTP.

I've looked around for solutions, most suggest changing some parameters in the .tcshrc file and this problem will go away. But this does not work.

I'm under the impression that it's something to do with the large amount of files in 'Data', and ls cannot list them all...

Also, the same happens when I try to retrieve any amount of files from the 'Data' folder using mget, even if it's just 10 I want it still gives that error message and cuts the connection.

Any suggestions?

[Serin]

Hello,

Have you tried using another SFTP client to see if the problem goes away? My guess is that the MAC client doesn't have the most robust packet re-assembly algorithm and can't handle a single large directory response packet, even though it is split into correctly-sized smaller SSH packets.

I'll do some testing on our side to make sure we don't have any problems with huge directory listings with other SFTP clients. I did a quick test of 4000 directory items before this post without any issues on Windows.

[Serin]

There are a few things we can do on our end to ease compatibility with SFTP clients that don't allow large SFTP name packets. I'm looking into options now to make sure huge directory listings work with all SFTP clients. I'll post a new response here once I'm finished.

[Serin]

EoinCar,

We've posted a new version of Cerberus FTP Server that should be more tolerant of SFTP clients that don't handle very large directory listings in a single packet. Try the latest release version and let me know if it fixes your issue.

[EoinCar]

I downloaded the updated software and it completely fixed my problem! Thank you very much, it was very helpful of you. I very much appreciate your time and effort.

Thank you again!