Problems with SCP stalling during file copy over VPN

Question

I have a series of files I need to copy via SCP over a VPN to a remote linux server each night. The files are not large, we're talking about tens of megabytes here, but the file copy almost always stalls after a few seconds. Running the SCP command with -vvv, I see the following over and over throughout the attempted copy process:

debug2: channel 0: rcvd adjust 131072
debug2: channel 0: rcvd adjust 131072
debug2: channel 0: rcvd adjust 131072

Any thoughts? I see this question being asked in various places out there, but never any answers. Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Are you running the latest version of whatever ssh servers and clients you're using? I'd also recommend hitting their email lists on this as it seems rather obscure.

Answer 2

We had similar spurios problems with scp to some Linux servers (Debian, 2.6.24-etchnhalf).

We were able to do away with the stalls by disabling the TCP variable tcp_sack ("tcp selective acknowledgements") on the remote servers:

sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_sack=0

On Debian, tcp_sack is enabled by default. If I read http://www.frozentux.net/ipsysctl-tutorial/chunkyhtml/tcpvariables.html, it should make no sense to disable this option, but in our case, it helped.

You can make this change permanent by adding a line net.ipv4.tcp_sack=0 to /etc/sysctl.conf (on other Linux systems YMMV).

Answer 3

Are you allowing ICMP through the VPN? "TCP connection stalls after a few seconds" often translates to "PMTU black hole".