Bug 1302

Summary:	scp failes to copy a file with newline
Product:	Portable OpenSSH	Reporter:	Zdenek Pytela <zdenek>
Component:	scp	Assignee:	Assigned to nobody <unassigned-bugs>
Status:	CLOSED DUPLICATE
Severity:	minor	CC:	djm
Priority:	P2
Version:	4.3p2
Hardware:	ix86
OS:	Linux

Description Zdenek Pytela 2007-04-04 20:12:49 AEST

When copying a directory (scp -r) with a file containing \n
copying stops with cryptic message
protocol error: expected control record
Debug mode is more verbose about the cause:

Sink: : skipping, filename contains a newline
protocol error: expected control record
debug1: client_input_channel_req: channel 0 rtype exit-status reply 0
debug1: channel 0: free: client-session, nchannels 1
debug1: fd 0 clearing O_NONBLOCK
debug1: fd 1 clearing O_NONBLOCK
...
debug1: Exit status 1

First, newline is legal (although weird) character for a file. Second, the message doesn't help to user find what happened. Third, the copying is not skipping one file, but stops at all.

Comment 1 Darren Tucker 2007-04-04 21:26:25 AEST

This is basically an unfixable limitation of the scp protocol.  The header pretty much just "filename size modes\n" and when the filename has a newline in it the protocol breaks.

You could escape the newlines (which I think I have a patch for somewhere) but then the complaint becomes "scp changed my filename".

About the best that could be done is to bail or skip the file with a "don't do that, then" error when someone tries to copy a file with a newline embedded in the name.

Comment 2 Damien Miller 2007-05-17 22:57:33 AEST


*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 891 ***

Comment 3 Damien Miller 2008-04-04 09:59:04 AEDT

Close resolved bugs after release.