PuTTY bug win-pageant-max-connections

This is a mirror. Follow this link to find the primary PuTTY web site.

summary: After 30 or so simultaneous PuTTY sessions, Windows Pageant stops working
class: bug: This is clearly an actual problem we want fixed.
difficulty: fun: Just needs tuits, and not many of them.
priority: high: This should be fixed in the next release.
present-in: 0.75
fixed-in: 6e69223dc262755c2cd2a3bba5c188d8fc91943a 11b89407f5d225e461a266a9c7f23299e5314abf (0.76)

In version 0.75, Windows Pageant would stop working after a certain number of PuTTYs (or other PuTTY tools) were active at the same time (typically about 30). Subsequently started PuTTY tools would tend to hang.

This was due to two separate bugs in the new Pageant connection arrangements introduced in 0.75 (pageant-named-pipe):

Whenever PuTTY made a named-pipe connection to Pageant, it would not close the connection when it was done with it. This led to connections used for initial authentication staying needlessly open for the lifetime of the PuTTY tool. This leak was fixed on the main branch in commit 6e69223dc262755c2cd2a3bba5c188d8fc91943a, which fixed the most obvious manifestations of this problem.
That there was a limit at all on simultaneous connections to Pageant was fixed later, in commit 17c57e1078c8fabd5417175247b38ce7b1643ca4: see win-pageant-max-connections-2. (The limit was about 60, but each PuTTY tool might make more than one.)

If you want to comment on this web site, see the Feedback page.

Audit trail for this bug.

(last revision of this bug record was at 2022-05-15 14:15:31 +0100)