Connect to vCSA using WinSCP

The default shell of the vCSA is the Appliance Shell (/bin/appliancesh), which doesn’t work with WinSCP.

There are two solutions to work around this issue:

1. Change the default shell of the root account to the Bash shell (/bin/bash)
2. Configure WinSCP to use the SFTP protocol (yes, SFTP; not SCP) with the shell setting “shell /usr/lib64/ssh/sftp-server”

PS. Both of these solutions require enabling SSH login and Bash shell on the appliance.

• For the solution #1, here are the commands (see VMware KB2107727 for the full instruction).
• SSH to vCSA
• shell.set --enable True
• shell
• chsh -s /bin/bash root
• change back: chsh -s /bin/appliancesh root
• For the solution #2 (credit to http://www.v-front.de/2015/03/vcsa-60-tricks-shell-access-password.html), the previous site does not provide the details on configuring WinSCP. I had an issue when setting up the first time, and someone also commented the shell trick does not work anymore. So I document the step-by-step instruction below.
• Personally, I prefer the solution #2. Since I don’t need to mess-up the default shell of the root account.

The following instruction tested on vCSA 6.0 update 2 (6.0.0.20000) with WinSCP version 5.9 (build 6786).

• Login vCSA web console (https://<vcsa-server>:5480)
• Under Access, click Edit, select the checkboxes for “Enable ssh login” and “Enable bash shell”
• 
• Change the Timeout value if necessary
• 
• Create a new site in WinSCP
• Select “SFTP” under File protocol, type the vCSA host name, root and its password.
• 
• Click the Advanced dropdown to edit the Advanced Site Settings
• 
• Under Environment, SFTP, SFTP server, enter “shell /usr/lib64/ssh/sftp-server” (without quotes)
• 
• Click OK and Save the setting, and click Login