WinSCP freezes when copying dirs with named pipes in it

Hello,
here is one bug or feature I found. When I am trying to copy a small directory from i.e. Linux to Windows, and there is a named pipe in it (mknod name p), WinSCP stops there and freezes or there comes a "Host is not communicaing for more thant 15 seconds" popup. When deleting that FIFO everything works. Maybe you can implement some check for ugly filetypes.

• WinSCP Version 4.2.7 or older
  
• Win XP SP3
  
• SFTP-3 protocol
  
• Manual copy, GUI, F5 key
  
• Steps to reproduce: mkdir /tmp/aaa;cd /tmp/aaa;touch a b c x y z; mknod d pipe; then try to copy that dir aaa to your PC.
  

Greetings,
Axel

WinSCP does what you ask it to do. It may be perfectly reasonable to copy named pipe.

It's not that I want to copy pipes! When I try to copy a dir with hundred files and there is a pipe in it it just stops and you don't know why. A popup "Warning! Cannot copy a named pipe!" woud be great.

I run into this problem too. it is a problem for me because I copy a folder containing hundreds of subfolders that contain thousands of files, and the complete copy stops whenever it encounters a named pipe. Only workaround for me is to copy file-by-file.

WinSCP gives the following dialog window:

Host is not communicating for more that 15 seconds. Still waiting...
Warning: Aborting this operation will close connection!
[Abort] [Help]

this is WinSCP Version 4.3.8 (Build 1771)
Copying files from ubuntu 11.04 to Windows Vista.
New/updated files only in background transfer.

@bheinsius: You can use an exclude mask to exclude all interfering named pipes.
https://winscp.net/eng/docs/ui_transfer_custom

You can't copy a named pipe, because it's no normal file! It's empty as long as you don't fill it from the second side. A named pipe is marked with a special file flag (in Linux), so it should be excluded automatically!

@geer: So you can copy it, if you fill it from the other side. That's the very reason for named pipes existence. It's an API that behaves as a file (so it can be used with any tool that can work with files – such as WinSCP), yet its contents can be generated on the fly.

Anyway, can you post Debug 2 level session log file with directory listing containing the pipe? So we can check what information that your server provide that can be used to identify it as a pipe?