PuTTY bug scp-preserve

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summary: PSCP in SCP mode messes up file download with '-p' option
class: bug: This is clearly an actual problem we want fixed.
priority: high: This should be fixed in the next release.
absent-in: 0.70
present-in: 0.71
fixed-in: 4135e5d29550654227e275907e63a58e232cce38 (0.72)

PSCP, when it is using the SCP protocol (which is rare), and has been configured to preserve timestamps and permissions (with -p) on a downloaded file can, due to a mistake in the protocol implementation, get the file name wrong, create a local file with an unhelpful mode, get the size wrong and perhaps hang, maybe print bits of the file content to the console, and generally makes a complete hash of things. For instance:

$ ./pscp -scp -remotehost:stoat .
Keyboard-interactive authentication prompts from server:
| Password:
End of keyboard-interactive prompts from server
warning: remote host tried to write  to a file called '0 1559391040 0
0664 160166 stoat
'
         when we requested a file called 'stoat'.
         If this is a wildcard, consider upgrading to SSH-2 or using
         the '-unsafe' option. Renaming of this file has been disallowed.
stoat                     | 32 kB |  32.0 kB/s | ETA: 00:04:45 |   0%
[hang]

In most circumstances, PSCP will use the more modern SFTP protocol, which does not have this problem. The SCP protocol will only be used if the server doesn't appear to support SFTP (rare), or if the user explicitly specified the -scp option on the command line.

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(last revision of this bug record was at 2019-06-01 13:44:01 +0100)