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eikenberryyesterday at 9:13 PM1 replyview on HN

> Their pscp implementation is a better drop-in replacement than the OpenSSH solutions.

What makes it a better drop in replacement?


Replies

chasilyesterday at 9:37 PM

Several reasons.

-PuTTY pscp allows raw passwords on the command line, or from a file. OpenSSH is unreasonable in refusing to do this.

-Scripting can adapt to a .netrc easily; OpenSSH will never do this.

-Modern OpenSSH is a nightmare when using legacy crypto, while pscp is fluid. There is nothing wrong with hmac-md5, and no reason to refuse it. I will take PuTTY or dropbear in a heartbeat over these burned bridges and workarounds.

https://www.openssh.org/legacy.html

-pscp does not link to dozens of libraries as ssh/scp does, so it is easier to build with less dependency. The ldd output of ssh and scp on rhel9 is 23 libraries, while PuTTY is 3 [package obtained from EPEL].

-pscp strongly leans to SFTP on the backend and can be directed to use it exclusively, so there is no ambiguity.

-Using pscp with a retry on fail is much easier than sftp -b.

-The wacky cipher control on rhel8 does not impact the PuTTY tools.

That is an extensive list.

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