Linux – Problems with SCP stalling during file copy over VPN

That should absolutely match hidden files. The / at the end of the source says "every file under this directory". Nevertheless, testing and research bear you out. This is stupid behavior.

The "answer" is to append a dot to the end of the source:

scp -rp src/. user@server:dest/

The real answer is to use rsync.

My thoughts:

On-the wire level errors should be eliminated by the Ethernet and TCP checksums. It is possible that corrupted Ethernet frame / IP packet could slip now and then up to the higher levels of the networking stack, but it really isn't very probable and definitely shouldn't lead to a repeatable issue. Therefore I see two main possibilities:

1) There's somebody fooling with your transmission, modifying in-transit data so that the Ethernet/IP checksums match, but encryption layer sees rubbish, or 2) More probably, you have some hardware error, most probably CPU or RAM, that damages data after it has been taken off-the-wire. Again, ECC RAM should reduce probability of this happening, but overheating / dying CPU can play hell with data.

I don't know if TCP Offload Engine with a mis-behaving NIC/driver could produce such errors, but that line of thought could explain (changed driver?) the correlation of problems with the update.