SFTP service giving "illegal sftp packet"?!? (message too long)

Question

I'm trying to SFTP into my office Intel Mac running Tiger. It used to work fine. Just now I discover the following error (after "login successful"):
I/I Error: connection failed
sftp://username@host:22
illegal sftp packet len: 1114795883
I'm using the Cyberduck client. If I try the sftp client from terminal, I get "received message too long 1114795883" and it quits. What the heck is going on?
Mike

Answer 1

Camelot wrote:
Sounds to me like your server has dropped to SSH v1 only and your client is talking SSH v2 (SFTP runs under SSH).
You can test this theory by using the -1 switch in your SFTP command:
sftp -1 username@host
If that is the case, check your server configuration - it's preferable to get that working with SSH v2 rather than to downgrade the client to SSH v1.
aha! Interesting. When I do sftp -1, I get this:
connecting to @...
Password:
Response: ******
stty: stdin isn't a terminal
stty: stdin isn't a terminal
stty: stdin isn't a terminal
stty: stdin isn't a terminal
sftp>
what does it mean that it prints "Password:" and then doesn't allow me to enter anything, but says "Response:" and then I enter my password and it lets me in? Why does it print 4 error messages about stdin? The good news is that after that, it works normally.
where on my server (Tiger) do I control v2 vs. v1? I haven't changed anything other than accept Apple's latest security patch how do I fix it?
thanks!!
Mike