Can't browse through ssh

[fulalas]

Is there any trick to access files/folders through ssh? The first time I try to do it pcmanfm-qt show me this dialog:

If I click on 'Login anyway' I see this:

Pressing 'OK' I see this:

And no files are shown.

If I try to access ssh through terminal everything works fine.

[tsujan]

I use SFTP without problem; haven't tried other methods.

[fulalas]

After all these errors, the address is automatically set to sftp. It makes no difference for me, as I get the same error.

I'm trying with Porteus (Slackware based), but I get the same error using Lubuntu Next Alpha (released today).

[tsujan]

For SFTP, you should enable and start the sshd service on the remote computer.

[fulalas]

Do you see the first dialog? I've just found out that if I login first through terminal then everything works fine inside pcmanfm-qt. So maybe the problem is related to login.

[tsujan]

Do you see the first dialog?

No I don't. When I put the SFTP address in pcmanfm-qt and press enter, a login dialog shows up, I enter the user password of the remote computer and then can see the remote user home and transfer files. Sorry, I can't attach a screenshot right now.

[fulalas]

I start it this way: /etc/rc.d/rc.sshd start

But it's not enough. I had also to access remote machine through terminal once, this way: ssh user@ip

Then back to pcmanfm-qt if I try to access remote machine again I get this:

And I finally can login with success.

[tsujan]

Yes, that's the password/login dialog I talked about. Did you start sshd on the remote computer?

[fulalas]

Yes. I'm doing in the same machine or in a VM. Anyway, it only works through terminal, or first attempt through terminal and then pcmanfm-qt. I guess there's some problem with the login dialog.

[tsujan]

As I said above, I can't confirm that. I use SFTP when I want to transfer files between my laptop and desktop computer and have never encountered a problem.

[fulalas]

If you're not seeing that first dialog in my first post, you're probably doing the first login outside pcmanfm-qt (maybe the login information it's already set somewhere?).

We need to reproduce the scenario where user tries to login for the first time inside pcmanfm-qt, because that's the problem. You can try a live boot (no need to install) of Lubuntu Next inside a VM. I tried here and the issue is easily reproducible; you just need to open a pcmanfm-qt instance and type ssh://userRealMachine@ipRealMachine : http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu-next/releases/17.10/alpha-1/artful-desktop-amd64.iso

[tsujan]

If you're not seeing that first dialog in my first post, you're probably doing the first login outside pcmanfm-qt

False assumptions lead to false conclusions and then, to confusion. I do no login outside pcmanfm-qt.

[tsujan]

And, as I said above, I only use sftp://user@ip/home/user.

[fulalas]

Take it easy, man. :)

Trust me, you did login first outside pcmanfm-qt. But pcmanfm-qt asks for login anyway, even if you did login outside it. Please, if you have time try Lubuntu Next and you'll see the problem I'm talking about, otherwise that first dialog I shown you (which, as far as I understand, belongs to pcmanfm-qt) will never be tested.

And ssh:// or sftp:// is the same thing for pcmanfm-qt. You can check.

[tsujan]

LOL! You mean I have two separate personalities, one of which logs in outside pcmanfm-qt, the other one only uses pcmanfm-qt, and they don't know about each other? That may explain how I'm writing code and replying to you simultaneously ;)

[fulalas]

I'm just saying that probably the first time ever your machine accessed another machine via ssh was not through pcmanfm-qt, and then the credentials were stored somewhere, so that's why you now can access through pcmanfm-qt without any problem.

But if you don't have time to test that pcmanfm-qt dialog (which is the main issue), I don't see the meaning of any discussion.

[tsujan]

I don't see the meaning of any discussion.

Agreed. When I answer to your question with "No", you say it should be a "Yes"!! There's nothing to discuss.

[fulalas]

Just to know if I understood correctly: you're not going to test that first pcmanfm-qt dialog I shown you in my first post (considering that I gave you the step-by-step of how to reproduce it)? If you're not, it's because you're busy (if so, it's totally comprehensible), or just because?

[tsujan]

I can't test anything for a while because I'm very busy. There's no reason to think otherwise. The reason why I replied to this was that sftp has ALWAYS worked here and I thought that if you knew that, you might find your way. My intention was helping you quickly. There are lots of pages on Internet that explain how to use sftp on Linux.

[fulalas]

The problem, of course, has nothing to do with my knowledge regarding ssh/sftp, but a bug in LXQt.

Thanks for your precious time. 👍

[vc-01]

This problem occurs when connecting to a host which is not in ~/.ssh/known_hosts. (Just quick response, no fix prepared yet...)

[agaida]

we should not mess with the ssh-things - in that case it seems to be a bug in sshfs.

Edit: erm - or maybe with our usage - anyways, the action to write things to knownhosts should be handled by ssh or sshfs

[brokenman]

Yes, as Fulalas pointed out it happens the first time you log in. Before knownhosts has been touched. Afterwards it goes smoothly. I don't experience this problem (sftp) in other file managers such as Thunar nor directly in console. Perhaps a permission issue writing to knowhosts.

@tsujan did you test the false assumption or assume it was false?

[tsujan]

@brokenman This is what I know for sure: it's 2 years that I use ftps with LXQt and I always use pcmanfm-qt for that -- nothing else. What had happened when I used KDE before LXQt, I don't know. I can only vaguely remember -- and don't count on what I'm going to tell -- that I might had encountered a similar issue with Dolphin (before coming to LXQt) and fixed the problem with an ssh -X ... once for all.

By "false assumption" I meant this weird statement by @fulalas: "If you're not seeing that first dialog in my first post, you're probably doing the first login outside pcmanfm-qt...". The present continuous tense of this sentence is everything but a "nice assumption".

[tsujan]

Oh, and I correctly quoted it 7 hours ago to prevent any misunderstanding.

[tsimonq2]

@fulalas First of all, thanks for trying Lubuntu Next Alpha and reporting this bug here. :)

I can't actually reproduce this by simply connecting to my VPS, as it works fine in pcmanfm-qt. But when I remove my VPS from my .ssh/known_hosts file, it tries to connect via SFTP. I honestly think that is a bug in our implementation of this. When it tries to connect over SFTP, there is no dialog box that opens up asking me for my username and password, and SFTP is not even installed on my VPS either.

Even after removing my VPS from .ssh/known_hosts and then connecting to it via the terminal (using the ssh command, which adds my VPS back to .ssh/known_hosts), it still tries to connect via SFTP.

This is in fact a bug on several levels, because even if the SSH option is intended to connect using SFTP, it's poor UI design to tell the user that they are connecting via SSH.

For the sake of pinpointing the exact version here (for bug reproducibility purposes), I am (and so is @fulalas if his system is up-to-date) is using the same exact pcmanfm-qt package as Debian is:

$ apt-cache policy pcmanfm-qt
pcmanfm-qt:
  Installed: 0.11.3-2
  Candidate: 0.11.3-2
  Version table:
 *** 0.11.3-2 500
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu artful/universe amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Thanks!

[fulalas]

@vc-01, thanks for your quick and useful help. Open source community misses people like you, really. :)

@tsimonq2, we can discuss Lubuntu Next issues somewhere else, I think. I have a few suggestions/bug reports that may help you. Do you know a place where I can post them? Thanks!

[tsimonq2]

@fulalas Sure, if you want to either file a bug against the Lubuntu Next project on Launchpad or send me an email, that would be great.

Thanks!

[vc-01]

To clarify (for reviewers) the proposed patch.

Gtk offers GtkMountOperation for GIO operations. MountOperationPasswordDialog::done is a kind of Qt implementation of GtkMountOperation:pw_dialog_got_response and MountOperationQuestionDialog::done can follow then GtkMountOperation:question_dialog_button_clicked.

[fulalas]

@vc-01, thank you very much for this patch! It's working fine :)

Just a couple of trivial suggestions:
1- If it's not possible to login anonymously, what you think about enabling user radio button?
2- And then putting focus on user line edit (if user name is not needed, put a focus on password line edit)?

Something like this:

    QTimer::singleShot(0,ui->username,SLOT(setFocus()));

    if(canAnonymous) {
        // select ananymous by default if applicable.
        ui->Anonymous->setChecked(true);
    }
    else {
        ui->Anonymous->setEnabled(false);
        ui->asUser->setChecked(true);
    }
    if(!needUserName) {
        ui->username->setEnabled(false);
        QTimer::singleShot(0,ui->password,SLOT(setFocus()));
    }

By doing this user doesn't need to do anything, except typing the useful information.

[vc-01]

@fulalas Yes, I agree with you on this UI improvement, I was keeping myself from doing any UI changes for now. But I think this will be agreed because it's a straightforward UI improvement.

Maybe I will make a PR if I find some time during the week.

[vc-01]

All solved and merged, this can be closed I think.

[palinek]

All solved and merged, this can be closed I think.

@fulalas ?

[LindyBalboa]

I am running into this issue using SSHDroid and Arch Linux. Connecting via terminal works ssh ssh://root@192.168.178.83:2222.