Remote copy through Dired fails

Question

I am trying to copy a file from a remote folder to a directory on my machine. I use Dired, and this the setup related to Dired in my configuration:

(use-package dired
  :bind (("C-c z" . dired-get-size)
         ("C-c C" . copy-file-name-to-clipboard))
  :config (progn
            (setq dired-auto-revert-buffer t ; Revert buffers on revisiting
                  dired-listing-switches "-lFaGh1v --group-directories-first"
                  global-auto-revert-non-file-buffers t ; Auto refresh dired
                  auto-revert-verbose nil ; But be quiet about it
                  dired-dwim-target t ; Use other pane as target when copying
                  dired-recursive-copies 'always ; Copy dirs recursively
                  dired-ls-F-marks-symlinks t ; -F marks links with @
                  dired-guess-shell-alist-user ; Use LibreOffice when needed
                  '(("\\.ods\\'\\|\\.xls?\\'\\|\\.xlsx?\\'" "libreoffice")
                    ("\\.odt\\'\\|\\.doc?\\'\\|\\.docx?\\'" "libreoffice")))

            ;; Make find-name-dired faster
            (use-package find-dired
              :config (setq find-ls-option
                            '("-print0 | xargs -0 ls -ld" . "-ld")))

            ;; Better M-< and M->
            (defun dired-back-to-top ()
              (interactive)
              (beginning-of-buffer)
              (dired-next-line 2))

            (define-key dired-mode-map
              (vector 'remap 'beginning-of-buffer) 'dired-back-to-top)

            (defun dired-jump-to-bottom ()
              (interactive)
              (end-of-buffer)
              (dired-next-line -1))

            (define-key dired-mode-map
              (vector 'remap 'end-of-buffer) 'dired-jump-to-bottom)

            ;; Open directory with sudo in dired
            (define-key dired-mode-map "!" 'sudired)

            (defun sudired ()
              "Open directory with sudo in dired."
              (interactive)
              (use-package tramp)
              (let ((dir (expand-file-name default-directory)))
                (if (string-match "^/sudo:" dir)
                    (user-error "Already in sudo")
                  (dired (concat "/sudo::" dir)))))

            ;; Get files size in dired
            (defun dired-get-size ()
              "Quick and easy way to get file size in dired."
              (interactive)
              (let ((files (dired-get-marked-files)))
                (with-temp-buffer
                  (apply 'call-process "/usr/bin/du" nil t nil "-sch" files)
                  (message
                   "Size of all marked files: %s"
                   (progn
                     (re-search-backward "\\(^[0-9.,]+[A-Za-z]+\\).*total$")
                     (match-string 1))))))))

(use-package dired-x ; Enable some nice dired features
  :config (progn
            ;; Omit hidden files by default (C-x M-o to show them)
            (setq-default dired-omit-files-p t)
            (setq dired-omit-files (concat dired-omit-files "\\|^\\..+$")
                  dired-omit-verbose nil)))

;; Note: to override dired+ faces, customize `font-lock-maximum-decoration'
;; adding an entry for `dired-mode' and setting decoration to default
(use-package dired+ ; Extend dired
  :ensure t
  :defer 5
  :config (progn
            ;; Reuse buffer for directories
            (diredp-toggle-find-file-reuse-dir 1)
            (setq diredp-hide-details-initially-flag nil
                  diredp-hide-details-propagate-flag nil)))

(use-package bookmark+ ; Better bookmarks
  :ensure t
  :defer 5)

Every time I try to copy from remote to local I get this error:

file-error Setting current directory No such file or directory

This is happening only when I'm copying a file in some nested directory on the remote machine. For instance, if I try to copy /home/admin/bin/foo to my local directory, it works. But if I try to copy /home/admin/bin/foo/bar I get the above mentioned error.

Some extra info:

• with emacs -Q copying files from remote to local works;
• with emacs -q I get the same error;
• copying from local to remote works every time;
• I am using Emacs 25.0.50.1 (build: ad39858) on Debian unstable;
• I listed (through C-h m) the active minor modes both with my init.el and with emacs -Q right before starting to copy the remote file: they are the same.

After some debugging, I nailed down the issue to this line of dired-copy-file-recursive:

(copy-file from to ok-flag preserve-time)

Answer 1

To solve this issue I opened a bug on the bug tracker, and finally a fix was found.

Checking with M-x list-load-path-shadows, I found out that tramp* files in /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp/ were hiding the correct tramp* files. Just removing them fixed this issue once and for all.

Thanks to Michael Albinus, then. I'll leave a link to the bug tracker if anyone is interested in the details.