SFTP and FileZilla - Connection closed by server with exitcode 128

Question

This was working well until a couple of days ago. I can't recall having done anything to the server leading it to start closing the connection. Also I have no idea what exitcode 128 means, and can't find anything about it. Here's FileZilla's response to the connection attempt

Status: Connecting to foo.bar.no...
Response:   fzSftp started
Command:    open "[email protected]" 22
Command:    Pass: *******
Status: Connected to foo.bar.no
Error:  Connection closed by server with exitcode 128
Error:  Could not connect to server

Trying to connect with WinSCP also tells me the server closed the connection with error code 128 and additionally tells me:

Cannot initialize SFTP protocol. Is the host running a SFTP server?

I can SSH connect to the server no problem using PuTTY. Any ideas?

Solution 1

It might be an invalid .bashrc file. In my case I found it was referencing another recently deleted script, and so failed.

Solution 2

According to this site: http://forum.filezilla-project.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17604, the problem is a bad username/password combination.

Solution 3

I had the same problem with one domain on my linux RHEL server. (My server requires ssh for security reasons.) I tried changing login and password and everything else.

What finally fixed it was in my WHM control panel, I disabled Shell Fork Bomb Protection. This feature limits ftp connections if there is a lot of traffic on the domain. When I disabled this, the ftp started working immediately and has worked ever since.

It has nothing to do with Filezilla or SCP setup. It is a matter or resources.

See http://docs.cpanel.net/twiki/bin/view/11_30/WHMDocs/ShellFork

Comments

[Hafizur Rahman]

I've tried rebooting the server and using passive mode. I've also tried changing the password which I don't see why would have worked, since I can log into SSH using PuTTY. Also this is the root account, so how can it be locked? :P

[Hafizur Rahman]

My user account is root :P In addition, this netstat line shows that root is also running ssh tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:22 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN root 3960 1130/sshd.

[MrGigu]

Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for reference.