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I have a Ubuntu server with 3 user accounts (root, user1, user2). user1 has access via WinSCP, scp and ssh. No problems here. Then I've created another user2 but with this user I can't access the server via WinSCP but scp and ssh through console works like a charm. WinSCP says that authentication fails but I'm 100% sure that I have made no typo (I can say this after 433245 retries). Now I'm trying to find the differences between the two user accounts and the only differences are their username, password and user2 is in the sudoers group.

Any suggestions what else I can try?

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Changing password of user2 fixed the issue. Now I am not sure if it has something to do with encoding or escaping of the password inside of WinSCP or any other weird problem.

EDIT 1: I changed the password back to the one not working and tried to find the special char causing problems. It was a the non-ASCII char '§' causing the problem. I tried another password with non-ASCII char 'ß' and this one didn't work too. So non-ASCII chars in UNIX-passwords are not a good idea.

EDIT 2: Bugreport was added to the WinSCP forum: http://winscp.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=56296#56296

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  • well, that would be easy for you to troubleshoot. Try changing it back to the password where you had the issue. Then troubleshoot to find what aspect of the broken password isn't working. And if when you change it back to the old password, then it now works, then you probably simply got the password wrong, making a typo either when setting the password on the user account, or when logging into it..
    – barlop
    Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 11:29
  • Thats a good hint. I'll try to check what part of the password makes trouble. I'm very sure that is was no typo because logging in through a console/bash was no problem. Maybe it has something to do with encoding. Thank you! :)
    – seveves
    Commented Apr 23, 2015 at 7:16
  • also, the general troubleshooting point for after fixing it if you think you'll be able to fix it again and you want to investigate more what fixed it, is to try to reproduce the problem.
    – barlop
    Commented Apr 23, 2015 at 7:36
  • Edited my answer. Non-ASCII chars causing the problem.
    – seveves
    Commented Apr 23, 2015 at 7:37
  • now you have a good answer, you can accept your own answer (that's good for the database, having good Q n As). Note- sometimes superuser only lets you accept it after 2 days of it being posted.
    – barlop
    Commented Apr 23, 2015 at 7:37
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Use WinSCP 5.9 or newer. These versions do encode usernames and passwords using UTF-8 encoding.

See https://winscp.net/tracker/1014

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