Re: Unable to use sftp with root account

["Josep Serrano" <mylists@montblanc.homeip.net>]

Hi lucato

>
> the init.d script that start sshd is the debian default:
(..)
> $SSHD_OPTS is an empty variable in /etc/default/ssh:

If you are using default init with enpty options then sshd reads the configuration
file in /etc/ssh/sshd_config. That's fine.

Now your local sftp client log has some good information:

(...)
> debug1: Next authentication method: password
> root@localhost's password:
> debug1: Authentication succeeded (password).

The login handshake works. At this point you did login in ssh with sucess.

> debug1: channel 0: new [client-session]
> debug1: Entering interactive session.
> debug1: Sending environment.
> debug1: Sending env LANG = it_IT@euro
> debug1: Sending subsystem: sftp
> Received message too long 538976288

Here something is messing up the protocol.
It may happen because of some startup file or because of some weird setting. Did you
change any environment/startup file recently?

Check all your .profile .login ... files. The ones for the root user but also the
system wide ones. Something is breaking the ssh protocol when your root environment
is being initialized.

Perhaps you can find what "message too long" is being send with the following command:
ssh root@localhost /bin/true

It should print whatever is being send at the initialization. The point is that sftp
doesn't expect such a long message.


Good luck,
Josep SERRANO.