Fixed

"Failed Initialization" error, SFTP to some hosts

13 years ago • updated by 5 years ago • 13

When connecting to certain hosts via SFTP, I get an error that says "Transfer Error: Failed initialization". For example: dante.u.washington.edu. It does not matter what username or password you use, you get the same error.

I had a similar problem with Panic's Prompt app, which has since been fixed in their app. They found that it was an issue with libssh2. If you are also using libssh2, the following discussion may help: http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.network.ssh.libssh2.devel/5414 .

Version 4.3

Vote

Answer

Fixed

12 years ago

Will be fixed in Textastic 4.3.

Replies 13
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13 years ago

That usually means that the SSH server doesn't have SFTP configured. Textastic does need the SFTP subsystem to transfer files.

13 years ago

Reading the discussion, I might be wrong. Can you please enable the "Debug Log" setting in the connection's settings, try to connect again and send the log file to support@textasticapp.com?

Thanks!

13 years ago

Here is the log:

== Info: About to connect() to dante.u.washington.edu port 22 (#0)
== Info: Trying 140.142.12.169... == Info: connected
== Info: Failure establishing ssh session
== Info: Closing connection #0
== Info: Failed initialization

SFTP is enabled on the server -- I can access it from my computer for example.

13 years ago

I am having the exact same issue - the server is properly configured to handle sftp yet textastic fails to establish the ssh session

13 years ago

Can you please have a look at the server log file? It should have an error message.

13 years ago

I ran into this issue today. I've tried Textastic with two hosts: one Linux (which worked fine) and one Mac OS X v10.7 (which caused this error). The log messages are identical to the above.

Looking at the Mac's log, I saw this in the /var/log/secure.log file for each attempt I made:
Did not receive identification string from x.x.x.x
(where x.x.x.x was my iPad's IP address)

13 years ago

Sorry, I don't know what would cause this problem.

13 years ago

I appreciate that this may be impossible to debug remotely, but I have one strange anomaly to add to the issue: I was later able to connect to the same Mac when the iPad was on the same local network (same subnet) as the SSH host. It could have something to do with the routers involved in my outside-the-firewall connection.

12 years ago

Same problem here. Prompt works with exactly the same settings.

SFTP subsystem is on:

"Subsystem sftp /usr/lib/openssh/sftp-server "

Still, no connect via ssh pubkey. And I just cannot open password auth for this ;)

12 years ago

I'm having the same problem: initialization error, with the same log message about being unable to establish ssh connection. Other sftp iPad apps I've tried work fine with the same server. It would be great if you could fix this!

Planned

12 years ago

Answer

Fixed

12 years ago

Will be fixed in Textastic 4.3.

5 years ago

I am having this problem now too, see log file:

== Info: Trying 206.12.27.10:22...
== Info: TCP_NODELAY set
== Info: Connected to grex.westgrid.ca (206.12.27.10) port 22 (#0)
== Info: Failure establishing ssh session: -43, Failed getting banner
== Info: Closing connection 0
== Info: Hostname grex.westgrid.ca was found in DNS cache
== Info: Trying 206.12.27.10:22...
== Info: TCP_NODELAY set
== Info: Connected to grex.westgrid.ca (206.12.27.10) port 22 (#1)
== Info: Failure establishing ssh session: -43, Failed getting banner
== Info: Closing connection 1

Is this still an ongoing problem?

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