>>>>> "BM" == baptiste millemathias writes:

BM> Hello, I'm usign a monitoring tool that use putty / plink to
BM> connect to ssh / telnet server. This monitoring tools is quite old
BM> and use the version 0.51. The problem is I recently installed a
BM> Debian Sarge server with openssh ssh (3.8.1p1-8.sarge.4), and
BM> putty and plink are unable to connect to this server. I tried with
BM> the version 0.58 and I was able to connect.

Use the putty/plink logging feature.

BM> As this server
BM> belongs to a customer I don't have root or adm access to read the
BM> log messages.

Then ask for them.

--
Richard Silverman
res@qoxp.net

baptiste.millemathias@gmail.com writes:
>I'm usign a monitoring tool that use putty / plink to connect to ssh /
>telnet server. This monitoring tools is quite old and use the version
>0.51.

PuTTY/Plink 0.51 have several known security holes, so you should avoid
using them.

>The problem is I recently installed a Debian Sarge server with openssh
>ssh (3.8.1p1-8.sarge.4), and putty and plink are unable to connect to
>this server.

What happens when you try?

>I tried with the version 0.58 and I was able to connect.

What does the client Event Log (or "-v" output) say for each version?

>I tried to upgrade the version of putty / plink on the monitoring
>server, but after that it was not able to connect to others Unix
>servers, so I restored the 0.51 version.

Again, what happens when you try connecting with 0.58 to these other
servers?

>To troubleshoot this problem, I would like to find all putty / plink
>versions between 0.51 and the latest. Is it available somewhere ?

You can currently get at previous versions at URLs like

(where you replace "0.58" with the version you want).

However, you (and anyone else using these) should note that all versions
before 0.57 have known security holes, so should be avoided.

>Is somebody is able to reproduce the same issue ?

Not without more detail!

Hello,

(I'm using 0.52 and not 0.51 as said before)

> PuTTY/Plink 0.51 have several known security holes, so you should
> avoid using them.
I'm totally aware this version has security holes, but at this time I
can't change as it is used by our monitoring tools in production (a
closed software).

> What happens when you try?
When I try to connect to this server, my session is closed without any
output just after I entered the password.

I dropped the log files of connection to the Debian server in
http://bmm80.free.fr/misc
I hope it will give you some hints.

Thanks for your help.

Regards

baptiste.millemathias@gmail.com writes:
>[Jacob Nevins:]
>> What happens when you try?
>When I try to connect to this server, my session is closed without any
>output just after I entered the password.
>
>I dropped the log files of connection to the Debian server in
>http://bmm80.free.fr/misc

(I hope that's not your real password in the log files!)

These files show PuTTY/Plink 0.52 failing, and 0.58 working.

I suspect 0.52 is dying upon seeing a keyboard-interactive packet with
zero prompts in it. This was a known bug that was fixed in 0.53. The
solution is clearly to upgrade.

You say you have trouble connecting to other servers with 0.58, though,
where 0.52 (0.51?) works.
Can you tell us what happens when you try to connect to these other
servers with 0.58, and provide the same sorts of logs, please?
(Taking care to ensure that real passwords don't appear, if you haven't
already!)

> (I hope that's not your real password in the log files!)
No, I removed it from the log files

It seems the monitoring tool don't use the "official" 0.52 binary,
because when I tested with the 0.52 coming from the putty site; instead
of being disconnected, plink or putty crashed after the authentication
(!!).

> You say you have trouble connecting to other servers with 0.58
Not me (in cmd line), but my monitoring software, I don't know why it
fails but as this is a closed source software I don't know how it calls
the plink binary (and which are the arguments);

I will test again to upgrade the binary used, but I'm really
optimistic.

Thanks for your help.

baptiste.millemathias@gmail.com writes:
>It seems the monitoring tool don't use the "official" 0.52 binary,
>because when I tested with the 0.52 coming from the putty site; instead
>of being disconnected, plink or putty crashed after the authentication
>(!!).

That's the sort of failure mode I'd expect, at least from our binaries.
But I can't rule out that they would have silently exited sometimes
rather than crashing noisily.

Who is the vendor? Are you sure the binaries differ from ours?
Some versions of Windows come with FC.EXE which will do a byte-by-byte
comparison of two files. Failing that, you could compare file sizes.

>> You say you have trouble connecting to other servers with 0.58
>Not me (in cmd line), but my monitoring software, I don't know why it
>fails but as this is a closed source software I don't know how it calls
>the plink binary (and which are the arguments);

If you know the hostname it's calling plink with, you can probably
create a saved session with that name, and set that up to log the SSH
packets (and Event Log) to a file where you can see them.