Connecting to a Debian Sarge box with Macromedia Contribute

Posted by redbeard on Fri 17 Feb 2006 at 10:42

I'm in the process of trying to migrate an existing, and dying, server to a new Debian Sarge box. The existing server is running RedHat 7. I've got the basics working. However, I have to allow users to connect to the server using Macromedia Contribute, until such time that we can build a administration system for the site. I'm trying to get Contribute to use SFTP and connect to OpenSSH (ssh 1:3.8.1p1-8.sarge.4).

Every time I try, Contribute tells me

Your username or password is incorrect. Please check your configuration information or contact your administrator.

This is, needless to say, less than useful. So, I tried turning logging on sshd up to DEBUG3. Here are the results from that, with time stamps, URLs, and user info removed:

sshd[333]: Connection from ::ffff:xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx port 2388
sshd[10822]: debug1: Forked child 333.
sshd[333]: debug1: Client protocol version 2.0; client software version OpenSSH_
3.5p1
sshd[333]: debug1: match: OpenSSH_3.5p1 pat OpenSSH*
sshd[333]: debug1: Enabling compatibility mode for protocol 2.0
sshd[333]: debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_3.8.1p1 Debian-8.sarge.4
sshd[333]: debug2: Network child is on pid 334
sshd[333]: debug3: preauth child monitor started
sshd[333]: debug3: mm_request_receive entering
sshd[333]: debug3: monitor_read: checking request 0
sshd[333]: debug3: mm_answer_moduli: got parameters: 1024 2048 8192
sshd[333]: debug3: mm_request_send entering: type 1
sshd[333]: debug2: monitor_read: 0 used once, disabling now
sshd[333]: debug3: mm_request_receive entering
sshd[333]: debug3: monitor_read: checking request 4
sshd[333]: debug3: mm_answer_sign
sshd[333]: debug3: mm_answer_sign: signature 0x809db80(143)
sshd[333]: debug3: mm_request_send entering: type 5
sshd[333]: debug2: monitor_read: 4 used once, disabling now
sshd[333]: debug3: mm_request_receive entering
sshd[333]: debug3: monitor_read: checking request 6
sshd[333]: debug3: mm_answer_pwnamallow
sshd[333]: debug3: mm_answer_pwnamallow: sending MONITOR_ANS_PWNAM: 1
sshd[333]: debug3: mm_request_send entering: type 7
sshd[333]: debug2: monitor_read: 6 used once, disabling now
sshd[333]: debug3: mm_request_receive entering
sshd[333]: debug3: monitor_read: checking request 45
sshd[333]: debug1: PAM: initializing for username"
sshd[333]: debug3: Normalising mapped IPv4 in IPv6 address
sshd[333]: debug3: Trying to reverse map address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx.
sshd[333]: debug1: PAM: setting PAM_RHOST to "client.example.local"
sshd[333]: debug1: PAM: setting PAM_TTY to "ssh"
sshd[333]: debug2: monitor_read: 45 used once, disabling now
sshd[333]: debug3: mm_request_receive entering
sshd[333]: debug3: monitor_read: checking request 3
sshd[333]: debug3: mm_answer_authserv: service=ssh-connection, style=
sshd[333]: debug2: monitor_read: 3 used once, disabling now
sshd[333]: debug3: mm_request_receive entering
sshd[333]: debug1: do_cleanup
sshd[333]: debug1: PAM: cleanup
sshd[333]: debug3: PAM: sshpam_thread_cleanup entering

Of course, I don't know sshd's log output very well, but it seams to me that in the last few lines the client just disconnects without actually completing the connection.

I have verified that I can connect from my Windows box via PuTTY and PSFTP (although the PSFTP connection is kind of flaky). The logs from those programs continue on after the last mm_request_receive line.

So, on to the question. Has anyone been able to get Contribute working with this configuration (or any configuration on a Debian machine using SFTP)? Or, does anyone have any ideas as to something to check or look into, or a place such things might be documented? I've perused the Macromedia site and the only thing I can find is that OpenSSH is not officially supported on Debian (nor is anything else supported on Debian).

Incidentally, the RedHat server is just using standard FTP using vsftpd.


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This article is copyright 2006 redbeard - please ask for permission to republish or translate.