This is an old revision of the document!
SFTP Status/Error Codes
SFTP status/error codes are numerical codes that SFTP server1 uses to indicate result of client request (i.e. request sent by WinSCP to the server).
WinSCP translates the numerical codes to textual description for you, so you do not have to know them.
The SFTP server should also provide meaningful textual description of the error itself. WinSCP includes the server-side description in its error message, labeled “Error message from server”. Such description can include more detailed information than WinSCP can possibly deduce from the numerical code.
Advertisement
Code 4 (Failure)
Note that not all servers use all codes. Most SSH/SFTP servers, including the most commonly used OpenSSH, support only SFTP version 3 that defines only codes 0 to 8.
These servers would generally use code 4 (Failure) for many errors for which there is specific code defined in later versions of SFTP protocol, such as:
- Renaming file to name of already existing file.
- Creating directory that already exists.
- Moving remote file to different filesystem (HDD).
- Uploading file to full filesystem (HDD).
- Exceeding user disk quota.
In this case the server is required to provide meaningful description of the error itself (see above). Unfortunately, OpenSSH SFTP server uses always description “Failure”. Is such case, there is unfortunately no way to tell a reason of the failure.
References
- Status response section of
draft-ietf-secsh-filexfer-13; - SFTP specifications list in “History and development” section of SSH File Transfer Protocol.
- Exception are codes
6and7that intended to by used by client. But WinSCP never uses these.Back
Advertisement