sftp/scp issues with Windows 7?

[heatopher]

Hi, this is a bit odd. I've got some zip archives on a remote server which I'm downloading, through automated batch files and shell scripts (being both on the Windows and the Mac side), onto my local machines. On Windows, I finally succeeded in getting it all to work automatically with psftp.exe, pageant and all that, and I was so proud of myself.... But now I've found that the zip files which I'm getting from the server are corrupted. I don't think that there's anything wrong with my script, or at least if there is it's not the core issue. I have subsequently tried downloading the same files with Filezilla, WinSCP and Cyberduck, all of which come up with exactly the same sized corrupt file. I am downloading exactly the same files onto the Mac, and there is no corruption there. Conclusion then: there must be something globally wrong on this machine, possibly with the firewall (Norton 360) or with Windows 7. Any ideas out there? Thanks in advance,

H

[Murf]

Works on a MAC but not windows. Are the file permissions OK:

chmod - to check and change.not familiar with MAC but maybe it treats file permissions differently then Windows.

[heatopher]

Originally Posted by Murf

Works on a MAC but not windows. Are the file permissions OK:

chmod - to check and change.not familiar with MAC but maybe it treats file permissions differently then Windows.

Eh? Like I said, everything works on the Mac, and anyway my question is about downloading backup files from a server via (S)FTP, so it has nothing at all to do with file permissions on the Mac, does it?

Well, thanks for replying anyway,

H

[Murf]

Understand, however, it is only happening when you download with Windows based prograqms. MAC it does not.

There are several other possibilities;

Your firewall may not be letting the "continual connection to the ftp server" stay connected. However, the transfer continues, but corrupt. You indicated Norton, I would turn off all firewalls and see if the file downloads OK.

If this Zip file download has not been set with the correct mime-type specification (octet-stream) to denote that it is a binary file this issue may occur. Another possibility would be that the server is set to always gzip files being downloaded. In either case, gzip encoding, a Unix compression method, is applied to the Zip file and, for whatever reason, your program to download may then have a problem correctly downloading it. I'm not familiar with MAC so don't know it it would be a problem, obviously not.

Also windows uses the temperary directory when downloading, it could be the problem. Try deleting this folder;

Internet Options (found in control panel)General TAB Click Delete in the Browsing history section, then check or uncheck options; make sure Temporary Internet Files is checked, click Delete then OK.

[heatopher]

OK, that gives me a few ideas to work with. Thanks. I think I did try turning off the firewall already and that made no difference, but it's a couple of weeks ago now and I don't exactly remember; so I'll go through all the suggestionss one by one, and report back. Not today - got other plans. All the best,

H

[heatopher]

Hiya, coming back to this one, I checked things over again, and in the end it seems that the problem is not in the end about some corruption in the downloading process (sorry :~)

However, it's still worth noting that I'm a little surprised by what the problem has turned out to be. Namely, WinRAR, which I had assumed was a perfectly decent product, and never caused any problem before. It messes up when it's apparently not able to read the tar file within the zip file (I've been avoiding doing a tar.gz file on the assumption that I'd have problems with that in Windows - not sure if I was right in that, but anyway it's too late to change things around now). And then when I tried unzipping and unarchiving the tar file in another archive program (7-zip), it worked fine. So there you go - WinRAR no good in some cases, 7-zip apparently very good.

Sorry about heading down a bit of a blind alley with the FTP query, but that's the nature of the beast, isn't it, and we (or at least I) may have learned something :~}