For some reason, I sometimes miss changing this when installing a new instance of VMware vCenter, until I have to connect to the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) for a file transfer/upload via WinSCP. Hopefully this helps out users who are seeing this error and need a quick tip and an easy fix.

In a nutshell, when connecting to the vCenter Server Virtual Appliance using WinSCP, it fails and presents the error:

Received too large (1433299822 B) SFTP packet. Max supported packet size is 1024000 B

The error comes in when WinSCP connects to vCenter and is directed to the default appliance shell. The fix is to simply enable the BASH shell so WinSCP can connect.

for additional information, the official Broadcom KB can also be referenced and has some great information.

Let’s fix this – connect via SSH to the vCenter/VCSA. Note the default VCSA appliance shell:

We’ll need to access the BASH shell, so type in shell

In the Bash shell, run this command to change the default shell to Bash:

chsh -s /bin/bash root

And that’s it…now you can now login and use SCP (WinSCP, SCP command line, PSCP on Linux etc.) to upload/download files from the VCSA:

The bonus here is also that every time you now connect via SSH to the VCSA, it will also use the BASH shell by default.

Hope this helps some people out, if it did please leave a quick comment, and subscribe for notification for future blogs. Thanks!!