[Info-vax] scp or sftp: file is "raw", needs to be parsed - possible to work around that?

[Richard Whalen]

On Wednesday, May 19, 2021 at 7:29:16 AM UTC-4, gregor... at gmail.com wrote:
> Hi all, 
> 
> Trying to scp a very large file off an Alpha VMS 8.3 system. Larger the file, longer it takes to start the transfer. This scp message in verbose mode gives a clue: 
> SCP Source file is "raw", and it needs to be parsed 
> 
> Parsing a 20GB file takes longer than a standard scp timeout. and I need to scp files 10 times larger. 
> Perhaps there is a way to skip the parsing? 
> 
> Thanks in advance! 
> Greg

You don't state what SFTP/SCP you are using (TCP/IP Services, MultiNet, TCPware or SSH for OpenVMS).
The message is misleading. In the software available from Process Software this message is issued when the file attributes have not been fetched and need to be fetched.
The SFTP/SCP file transfer implementation needs the file size before transferring the file. If the file is a VMS text file the file may need to be read to determine the actual length.
Options to reduce this:
- convert the file to stream-lf, which is a native format for SFTP/SCP and will not require counting.
- store the file on an ods-5 disk and have the file length hint set.