OpenSSH on MIPS (Big Endian) uclibc shows empty directory listing when connected with sftp

[Gerald Kallas]

I've set up an OpenSSH on my MIPS (Big Endian) uclibc based system .. for development purposes on a qemu environment and for production an a settop box with real hardware. I experienced that sftp connected clients always get an empty directory listing. Same with OpenSSH at all as also with dropbear in combination with OpenSSH's sftp-server binary. More digging into details I checked the raw directory listing that is returned when requesting dir lsiting ..

Command:	ls
Status:	Listing directory /
Listing:	?---------   38 16893    15       1099511628032 Jan  1  1970 .
Listing:	?---------   38 16893    15       1099511628032 Jan  1  1970 ..
Listing:	?---------   19 16877    bin      1099511628032 Jan  1  1970 bin
Listing:	?---------   35 16877    adm      1099511628032 Jan  1  1970 dev
Listing:	?---------   18 16893    disk     1099511628032 Jan  1  1970 etc
Listing:	?---------    9 16893    adm      1099511628032 Jan  1  1970 lib
Listing:	?---------  194 16877    bin      1099511628032 Jan  1  1970 media
Listing:	?---------   28 16877    disk     1099511628032 Jan  1  1970 mnt
Listing:	?---------  199 41471    daemon   1099511628032 Jan  1  1970 opt
Listing:	?---------    1 16749    90       1099511628032 Jan  1  1970 proc
Listing:	?---------   39 41471    daemon   1099511628032 Jan  1  1970 root
Listing:	?---------   23 16877    bin      1099511628032 Jan  1  1970 sbin
Listing:	?---------   31 16893    sys      1099511628032 Jan  1  1970 share
Listing:	?---------    1 16877    9        1099511628032 Jan  1  1970 sys
Listing:	?---------  193 17407    sys      1099511628032 Jan  1  1970 tmp
Listing:	?---------    6 16877    7        1099511628032 Jan  1  1970 usr
Listing:	?---------   22 16877    sys      1099511628032 Jan  1  1970 var

It seems that the listing is incomplete (e.g. missing permissions, file size etc.). I wonder whether this is a behaviour especially on MIPS uclibc platform (on Ubuntu it works correctly for example).

Regards
- catshout