WinSCP: Error decoding SFTP packet

Overview

There is currently an error on version 3.2.1 involving WinSCP and the creation of Folder objects under your chroot directory.

This error only affects the WinSCP client -- other clients such as FileZilla are not affected.

Note: This issue has been resolved in version 3.003.00.

Error message and behavior

Here is a screenshot of the error message from the WinSCP client:

The problem is that WinSCP is unable to list the chroot directory if there is a subfolder that is backed by an SFTP Gateway Folder object.

For example, say that userA points to the default chroot directory:

/users/userA/

You can trigger the error by going to the Folders tab, and creating a Folder object under the userA/ folder:

/
/users/
/users/userA/
/users/userA/test/

WinSCP will not be able to read the test/ subfolder, because it is backed by an SFTP Gateway Folder object.

However, if you delete the /userA/test/ Folder mapping in the SFTP Gateway web admin portal, the user should be able to log in again via WinSCP.

Solution

To resolve the error, you can upgrade to the latest version of SFTP Gateway using the in-place upgrade script.