Unable to connect via SFTP

Community Support
1

Hello newly installed Hestia server using default installation Ubuntu 20.04 on Oracle (Ampere). I’m unable to connect via Filezilla (SFTP) using the admin user or additional user I setup. Password is for sure correct. Using the IP address of the server and port 22. I get these messages in Filezilla:

Error: Could not connect to server
Status: Waiting to retry…
Status: Connecting to 140.238.144.233…
Response: fzSftp started, protocol_version=11
Command: open [email protected] 22
Status: Using username admin.
Error: Could not connect to server

I have ensured SSH is set to bash for admin and the additional user as well as in the default packages.
Fail2ban is stopped
Port 22 is opened on the server
I also tried this on a completely different server platform (AWS Lightsail) with a fresh install and experienced the same issue.

auth.log shows:
May 7 18:58:01 hcp CRON[1606381]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user admin by (uid=0)
May 7 18:58:01 hcp sudo: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
May 7 18:58:01 hcp sudo: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
May 7 18:58:01 hcp CRON[1606381]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user admin

Would appreciate any suggestions. Thanks

2

Additional user as in user_xxxx will not work

Also please provide more information from the log files

According this log only attempt to login from root was made

3

I’ve tried both the admin username as well as the additional user account that I setup called tailwind.
Here is the full log file: Dropbox - auth.log - Simplify your life
I can connect via putty to the server using root as username and the key.

4 
May  7 18:16:42 hcp sshd[1600218]: Accepted publickey for admin from 127.0.0.1 port 53558 ssh2: RSA SHA256:/N51mETpgSSJPazNd22TRfIM28NVMKdcc3prPi6Hh40

You are able to connect via SFTP via file manager.

For tailwind_trench it is currently not possible to use sftp.

May  1 03:57:57 hcp useradd[877390]: new user: name=tailwind_trench, UID=1003, GID=1003, home=/home/tailwind/web/sign.trenchfitness.com, shell=/usr/sbin/nologin, from=none
May  1 03:57:57 hcp useradd[877390]: add 'tailwind_trench' to group 'hestia-users'
May  1 03:57:57 hcp useradd[877390]: add 'tailwind_trench' to shadow group 'hestia-users'
May  1 03:57:57 hcp chpasswd[877399]: pam_unix(chpasswd:chauthtok): password changed for tailwind_trench

I also see a lot:

May 7 18:10:04 hcp sshd[1597867]: Connection closed by authenticating user tailwind xxxxx port 57700 [preauth]
May 7 18:10:26 hcp sshd[1597869]: Connection closed by authenticating user admin xxxxx port 57729 [preauth]
May 7 18:10:32 hcp sshd[1597871]: Connection closed by authenticating user admin xxxxx port 57736 [preauth]

As SFTP and SSH are using the same protocol there should be no reason why it doesn’t work. It might be a client issue