GAiA tricks - enabling sftp

GAiA is supposed to be more superior and generally better OS than SPLAT. In some aspects it is. But for someone used to work with SPLAT it may also be a hustle. A lot of things are done differently there. I am starting series of posts for GAiA tricks.

Today let's make SFTP work.

If you have ever tried SFTP with GAiA, it does not work for a very simple reason: it is disabled. To enable it, you have to do the following:

1. Create a new user for SFTP access with default bash shell. Alternatively change admin shell to bash. If you do not know how to do that, check chsh command.
2. Access Expert mode and open to edit sshd_config file: vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config
3. Uncomment the following string:
   #Subsystem sftp /usr/libexec/openssh/sftp-server
   and save the file.
4. Run /etc/init.d/sshd restart

Now enjoy SFTP working again.

Update: As Dameon D. Welch-Abernathy tells me on FB, there is SK for that: SK82281

Update 2: After some rather intensive discussion in one of LinkedIn groups, I have to make a clarification. SCP is working on GAiA same way it was with SPLAT. If you are using WinSCP client, it tries SFTP but falls back to SCP if there is a problem. That means, to transfer files with WinSCP client, you only need to perform step 1 from above. With WinSCP it is not so different from SPLAT.

But if you are not using Windows and/or want to run explicitly SFTP and not SCP, you still have to perform the whole procedure.