Tracy Phillips

I *really* like most of Google’s services… It may take a while for me to like/get used to them but I eventually come around. One of the latest is Google Docs & Spreadsheets (formally known as Writely). I use it all the time now to keep notes.

If you use Firefox and docs.google.com you may have noticed that if you highlight something to cut/copy and paste you get the following error:

"Your browser does not allow access to your computer's clipboard.
Instead, use CTRL+C, ......"

If you have looked in the Firefox security settings there is nothing that controls such a beast. The solution is to either edit or create (if there is not one there) a user.js file at:

C:\Documents and Settings\Windows login name\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\weird folder name\

Append the following to your user.js file:

user_pref("capability.policy.policynames", "allowclipboard");
user_pref("capability.policy.allowclipboard.sites", "http://docs.google.com");
user_pref("capability.policy.allowclipboard.Clipboard.cutcopy", "allAccess");
user_pref("capability.policy.allowclipboard.Clipboard.paste", "allAccess");

Now close completely out of Firefox, including Quick Launch in the task bar if you have it running, and start it up again.

The next time you visit docs.google.com and try to right click to cut/copy/paste, you will notice that it works like a charm.

If you are trying to use ssh (or sftp as the case may be) to transfer files to your server and you get:

File transfer server could not be started or it exited unexpectedly.
Exit value 0 was returned.
Most likely the sftp-server is not in the path of the user on the server-side.

These errors are usually caused by commands in a shell run-control file (.cshrc, .profile, .bashrc, etc.) that produce output to the terminal. This output interferes with the communication between the SSH daemon and the sftp-server subsystem.

Examples of such commands might be date or echo. If you use the mail command to check for mail, it can cause the error, too.