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Reporting Bug or Asking for Support
- Help Yourself
- How to Effectively Report Bug or Ask for Support
- Example of Bug Report
- Example of Support Request for Scripting
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Help Yourself
First, try to troubleshoot your issue yourself.
How to Effectively Report Bug or Ask for Support
When posting your request for support or reporting a bug, please include as much of the following information as you know. If you do not know some of these information or if you suppose that some are irrelevant for the issue, please mention that as well.
- Version of WinSCP you are using (you should be using the latest version if possible).
- If the problem started to occur after upgrade, mention the last version of WinSCP which was working for you.1
- Version of Microsoft Windows you are running WinSCP on.
- Transfer protocol (SFTP, FTP, SCP, WebDAV or S3).
- Mention if you use GUI or scripting/automation. If you use GUI, specify interface style you are using (Commander or Explorer).
- If you experience an error, include full error message. You may use
Ctrl+Cto copy the message, then paste it (Ctrl+V) to the post. Also check list of common error messages. - Try to describe precise steps that lead to the problem (where do you click, what keys do you press, what do you see, etc.). If you are not able to reproduce the problem with the steps, it is probably not worth to report it as I will not be able to reproduce it (and solve) too.
Particularly, if the problem relates to user interface, consider recording your steps or even full video. E.g. using Steps Recorder in Windows 7 or newer2 or Start recording function of Game bar in Windows 11 and Windows 103 or Recordit or similar service. - If your problems relates to interaction with remote server, please post a full log file showing the problem.
To generate log file, enable session logging, log in to your server and do the operation and only the operation that causes the error.
Always attach your log to the post as a file, never paste the log into post text. When posting extensive logs please compress them before attaching.
Note that passwords and passphrases are not stored in the log. You may want to remove other data you consider sensitive though, such as host names, IP addresses, account names or file names (unless they are relevant to the problem).
If you do not want to post the log publicly, you can mark the attachment as private. - For scripting/automation-related issues, include your full script, command-line you use to run WinSCP, and output you see on WinSCP console.
Register on the forum before you post. I may be able to deal with your issue only after some time, so I would appreciate if I have a contact to you.
Example of Bug Report
Subject: Open session in new window
While a session is opened and the main window is shown, hold down the Shift key and click on a stored site (in Session > Sites menu) in a subfolder in order to open the session in a new window.
It does not work.
Instead, an error message pops up saying: “Host does not exist”.
Using WinSCP 5.15 with “Commander” interface on Windows 10 1809.
It happens for any stored site in a subfolder, regardless of a protocol or a server. So I’m not posting a session log file, as it seems irrelevant.
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Example of Support Request for Scripting
Subject: Trouble setting server timeout via command line
I have a client with a slow FTP server, it takes 25 seconds or so to connect. Whenever I attempt to add the -timeout=xxx switch to the end of my open command, WinSCP just bails out. No session log file is even created. If I remove the -timeout switch, it connects.
Here is the command line:
winscp.exe /console /script=test.txt /log=log.txt
Here is the script:
open sftp://user:pass@site/ -timeout=60 option transfer binary get *05152008* close exit
After running the script I get following in console:
batch abort confirm off Too many parameters for command 'open'.
Using WinSCP 4.0.7 on Windows 7. A session log file is attached.