PuTTY bug portfwd-at-start

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summary: "unexpected packet type 91" with tunnel open during connection setup
class: bug: This is clearly an actual problem we want fixed.
present-in: 0.53b 2003-06-04 0.54
fixed-in: 2004-11-28 02b0474f578ec550552989bd6461fd7151609006 (0.58)

(See also ext-data-at-start.)

Report of message "Unexpected response to shell/command request:
packet type 91" - seems to be correlated with seeing "Opening
forwarded connection" before "Allocated pty" in Event log.

Sounds to me like the connection setup code is insufficiently able to
cope with asynchrony. PuTTY certainly shouldn't be sending CHANNEL_OPEN
then being offended by the resulting CHANNEL_OPEN_CONFIRMATION.

ref <[email protected]> and prior in
thread.

Excerpts from bug reports:

----------
2003-06-05 00:21:20     Looking up host "server.example.com"
2003-06-05 00:21:20     Connecting to X.Y.Z.W port 22
2003-06-05 00:21:20     Server version: SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_3.4p1
2003-06-05 00:21:20     We claim version: SSH-2.0-PuTTY-Snapshot-2003-06-04
2003-06-05 00:21:20     Using SSH protocol version 2
2003-06-05 00:21:21     Doing Diffie-Hellman group exchange
2003-06-05 00:21:21     Doing Diffie-Hellman key exchange
2003-06-05 00:21:30     Host key fingerprint is:
2003-06-05 00:21:30     ssh-dss 1024 XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
2003-06-05 00:21:30     Initialised AES-256 client->server encryption
2003-06-05 00:21:30     Initialised AES-256 server->client encryption
2003-06-05 00:21:30     Initialised zlib (RFC1950) compression
2003-06-05 00:21:30     Initialised zlib (RFC1950) decompression
2003-06-05 00:21:31     Reading private key file "C:\some\path\to\key.PPK"
2003-06-05 00:21:31     Offered public key
2003-06-05 00:21:31     Offer of public key accepted
2003-06-05 00:21:32     Access granted
2003-06-05 00:21:32     Opened channel for session
2003-06-05 00:21:32     Requesting X11 forwarding
2003-06-05 00:21:32     X11 forwarding enabled
2003-06-05 00:21:32     Local port 10119 forwarding to news.example.com:119
2003-06-05 00:21:32     Local port 8080 forwarding to proxy.example.com:8080
2003-06-05 00:21:32     Opening forwarded connection to news.example.com:119
2003-06-05 00:21:32     Allocated pty
2003-06-05 00:21:32     Unexpected response to shell/command request: packet type 91

And a bit more verbose (another run with the same behaviour):

Event Log: Offered public key
Incoming packet type 60 / 0x3c (SSH2_MSG_USERAUTH_PK_OK)
Event Log: Offer of public key accepted
Outgoing packet type 50 / 0x32 (SSH2_MSG_USERAUTH_REQUEST)
Incoming packet type 52 / 0x34 (SSH2_MSG_USERAUTH_SUCCESS)
Event Log: Access granted
Outgoing packet type 90 / 0x5a (SSH2_MSG_CHANNEL_OPEN)
Incoming packet type 91 / 0x5b (SSH2_MSG_CHANNEL_OPEN_CONFIRMATION)
Event Log: Opened channel for session
Event Log: Requesting X11 forwarding
Outgoing packet type 98 / 0x62 (SSH2_MSG_CHANNEL_REQUEST)
Incoming packet type 99 / 0x63 (SSH2_MSG_CHANNEL_SUCCESS)
Event Log: X11 forwarding enabled
Event Log: Local port 10119 forwarding to news.example.com:119
Event Log: Local port 8080 forwarding to proxy.example.com:8080
Outgoing packet type 98 / 0x62 (SSH2_MSG_CHANNEL_REQUEST)
Event Log: Opening forwarded connection to news.example.com:119
Outgoing packet type 90 / 0x5a (SSH2_MSG_CHANNEL_OPEN)
Incoming packet type 99 / 0x63 (SSH2_MSG_CHANNEL_SUCCESS)
Event Log: Allocated pty
Outgoing packet type 98 / 0x62 (SSH2_MSG_CHANNEL_REQUEST)
Incoming packet type 91 / 0x5b (SSH2_MSG_CHANNEL_OPEN_CONFIRMATION)
Event Log: Unexpected response to shell/command request: packet type 91

Reproduced using netcat: "nc -vvvvvv localhost 10119" runned many times
while PuTTY is connecting.
----------

Previous report:
----------
PuTTY Release 0.53b
Windows 95 B
SSH2
Server version: SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_3.4p1

The problem/symptom: PuTTY shows a message box with "Unexpected response to
shell/command request: packet type 91" and goes into inactive mode where
port forwarding isn't possible (I guess it's line 5236 in ssh.c).

How to reproduce: Have PuTTY forward a local port to a machine on the other
end. Try to use the forwarded port while starting PuTTY and connecting to
the remote host.

I have the problem with an internal news server on my university which I
read through an SSH forwarded port using Forte Agent that I tell to fetch
news before PuTTY is connected. Forte Agent waits 1 second between retries.

[...]

It seems PuTTY sends an SSH2_MSG_CHANNEL_OPEN interleaved with other
packets and then gets confused when it sees the reply
SSH2_MSG_CHANNEL_OPEN_CONFIRMATION.

I should probably also note that the problem is periodic, and whenever I
have seen the problem and the event log (5 times or so) it has had "Opening
forwarded connection to news.example.com:119" just before "Allocated pty".

Also I have found netcat better to provoke the error by trying "nc -vvv
localhost 10119" just before running "C:\Programmer\putty\putty.exe -load
ask" in another prompt.
----------

SGT, 2004-11-27: I've rearchitected the SSH back end somewhat, so that it's now a hybrid of coroutine-based sequential code and random dispatch-table handling of incoming packets. This ought to solve this problem, although I'm unable to immediately test it.


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Audit trail for this bug.
(last revision of this bug record was at 2017-04-28 16:52:45 +0100)