[scponly] Anyone hit file count limit in scp?

[Ralf Durkee]

The number 97 certainly makes a lot of sense.  A fairly typical max open 
file limit is 100 minus at least 3 for stdin, stdout and stderr. The 
opening and closing of files being transferred to the server should be done 
by the sftp-server, so I doesn't seem like it should be scponly, maybe a 
difference in chroot'ed sftp-server not being able to do something?  I did 
a quick test putting 600 files, and there was no problem with files being 
left open during the transfer.   While the sftp transfer is taking place 
you could use lsof, or lsof -u <user> to see what files are being left 
open.  You should also check that they aren't being left open on the client 
using lsof.

My test was with OpenSSH_3.7.1p2 ( FreeBSD server and Linux client) and 
scponly-3.11

-- Ralf Durkee, CISSP, GSEC, GCIH
Principal Consultant
http://rd1.net



At 03:55 PM 8/12/2004 -0600, you wrote:
>In a very vanilla configuration of scponly 3.11 I'm finding a
>file limit when I scp files to my host from the scponly host.
>[i.e. "scp scponlyhost:files\* ." where there are 900 files.]
>
>It stops very abruptly at exactly 97 files.  File name length
>and file size don't make a difference.
>
>Shifting to a user without scponly, using the same ssh/scp,
>works without problems.
>
>Anyone else seen this?  Don't see anything in the email archives.
>Source code sort of looks like I'm hitting MAX_ARGC, anyone
>increased that value?
>
>All suggestions appreciated.
>    Paul Hyder
>    NOAA Forecast Systems Lab
>    Boulder, CO