Dolphin uses fish: instead of sftp: for "SSH" connections

[Scott Kitterman]

Binary package hint: dolphin

When you make a "SSH" Network folder in Dolphin it uses the obsolescent fish protocol instead of sftp. Any Ubuntu server that has ssh installed supports sftp without additional configuration required.

Fish is problematic because it operates by attempting to drop a small perl script on the far end of the connection and will make multiple parallel connections rather than transfer files in sequence. In my case this is incompatible with server rate limits in the server firewall rendering the ability to make network folders useless.

While there is possbily some utility in offering fish as an alternative in the unlikely event sftp is not supported, it should not be the primary/only protocol for network connections over ssh.

[Ryan Kavanagh (ryanakca)]

Confirmed fish instead of sftp in Dolphin. Set to High due to the possible? security risk.

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

I've looked into this some more and don't think that Dolphin that is doing this directly, but some KDE or QT library. If someone could point me in the direction of what package provides x-wizard_service.desktop, I could probably figure a patch for this.

[Anthony Mercatante (tonio)]

Fish is just using standard ssh instead of sftp/scp and therefore is as secure as ssh can be, means well secured.
This is more a matter of wishlist than bug, so I'm changing the Importance.
That's to late to fix for gutsy, as we are in feature freeze.
I'll reconsider patching this for gutsy+1

[Anthony Mercatante (tonio)]

Not a dolphin issue, fixing this is a matter of patching knetaccess/netaccess in kdebase/kdelibs

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

Same issue in Konqueror too.

[Wouter Deconinck (wdconinc)]

This change in behavior could create some confusion. At my university (~40 000 users estimated) sftp and ssh access are only allowed to different servers (login.domain and sftp.domain). Not saying that that's a reason not to change this behavior, but then dolphin (and other apps) should probably change the text "Secure shell (ssh)" to "Secure shell (sftp)" to avoid confusion.

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

I think fish should still be available, but not the default.

Fish is no more SSH than SFTP is, so I don't think the name needs changing.

[Harald Sitter (apachelogger)]

I don't see how this is related to kdelibs, closing for now.

Please reopen and state what the affect is. Thank you.

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

Please read the bug. It's still present in Intrepid (I tried it). if
Tonio moved it to the wrong source package, then please move it to the
right one.

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

Nevermind part of my last comment, I see you moved it (read the bugmails in
the wrong order).

As I discussed in the bug, fish is an inferior protocol to sftp for many
reasons and should not be the default.

[Harald Sitter (apachelogger)]

From IRC:
<apachelogger> ScottK: KDE actually suggests sftp over fish, the latter is not as well maintained and got serious issues with non-latin characters, so since sftp works out of the box on Kubuntu just as well as fish it makes sense to have knetattach use sftp. fish is still available for those who need/want to use it.

Fish is no sensible default, so since we can say that sftp works by default it makes sense to change knetattach. Should someone need to use fish, they still can do that, but by default Kubuntu should suggest the usage of sftp.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package kdebase-runtime - 4:4.1.2-0ubuntu3

---------------
kdebase-runtime (4:4.1.2-0ubuntu3) intrepid; urgency=low

  [ Ryan Kavanagh ]
  * Make the Add Languages dropdown menu clear itself before listing the
    newly installed languages to avoid duplicates (LP: 278620)

  [ Harald Sitter ]
  * Add knotify4 manpage (LP: #278165)
  * Add kubuntu_01_onlyshow_knetattach_in_kde.diff to only show knetattach
    in KDE (LP: #277156)
  * Add kubuntu_02_fix_dash_incompatibility.diff (LP: #241916)
  * Add kubuntu_03_knetattach_use_sftp.diff to make knetattach use sftp by
    default, since it is preferred and works by default on Kubuntu (LP: #133957)

 -- Harald Sitter <email address hidden> Mon, 06 Oct 2008 02:22:16 +0200