[stirrell]

I am a recent switcher and one area I am having trouble with is with FTP. I have tried multiple clients and have had a problem with each one with transferring large sites from FTP servers. For example, I needed to back up a client site yesterday and there was about 370 megs of stuff in over 3,600 items.

When transferring large amounts of data with Transmit (my favorite FTP program and registered) I inevitably get a socket read error on a file and the transfer stops.

I also have Filezilla and thought that for large downloads, this would be my solution. It has worked fine in the past. On this site, though? It crashed. Same news for Cyberduck. They both unexpectedly quit.

I jumped into Parallels and used WS_FTP for the same download and... it worked.

All the troubles I have had so far is with my work server which is a Linux server co-located at Rackspace. I suspect that it probably is something to do with that particular server. But I am curious why it always worked fine on WS_FTP but I can find no joy with any FTP client on the Mac. Does anyone have any suggestions? I did talk to Panic but they couldn't help. Oh - and I have tried multiple connections - wired and wireless and the same problem persist. I also had this problem with 10.4 and 10.5.

Thanks for any insight. This is the one problem I am having with the Mac that is very frustrating (if I could fix this and Growl with the new Apple Mail in Leopard, the experience would be near-perfect).

[~bash $]

Oh, FTP. I would try Fetch, since I have found it to be the most useable ftp client on Mac. I haven't had occasion to use s/ftp in years since scp and ssh are so handy. But nevertheless, you should try setting the timeouts and all that stuff; I'm sure you've looked into all of that.

One other suggestion might be to use a program called SiteSucker that might do the trick for you. I'm not sute how it handles cgi-bin type of stuff or other "hidden-to-user" files, but it might be worth a shot.

[stirrell]

Originally Posted by ~bash $ 

Oh, FTP. I would try Fetch, since I have found it to be the most useable ftp client on Mac. I haven't had occasion to use s/ftp in years since scp and ssh are so handy. But nevertheless, you should try setting the timeouts and all that stuff; I'm sure you've looked into all of that.

One other suggestion might be to use a program called SiteSucker that might do the trick for you. I'm not sute how it handles cgi-bin type of stuff or other "hidden-to-user" files, but it might be worth a shot.

Thank you for the suggestions. I will give Fetch a shot. I owned it quite a while ago when I was still on OS 9. Unfortunately, I really don't like the single-paned interface. Ever since I got the local and remote files in a single window, I have never looked back . But if Fetch can handle the large downloads, I can use Transmit for everything else. It would be much nicer than having to fire up Parallels.

I am pretty sure SiteSucker would not work since I need all the various include files (each page would often be multiple PHP pages on the backend, for example. But thank you for the suggestion!

[besson3c]

If at all possible you shouldn't be using FTP anyway. Does your host provide SFTP/SSH as an option?

[stirrell]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

If at all possible you shouldn't be using FTP anyway. Does your host provide SFTP/SSH as an option?

Alas, no, it is not an option. But we are soon to be migrating to a new server so maybe I will ask about that.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by stirrell 

Alas, no, it is not an option. But we are soon to be migrating to a new server so maybe I will ask about that.

Well, if your problem is happening in multiple clients as you are describing it, I personally don't think the problem is with your client.

Is your FTP client in passive or active mode? Passive mode (PASV) chooses a random high port number to connect with while Active mode only connects on port 21. I can't explain your symptoms you are experiencing, but about the only thing you could try would be to switch from active to passive or vice versa. The problem sounds like a buggy FTP server install to me. Is the server using ProFTP? PureFTP? What version?

I've never had any of these problems over SSH - it seems much more consistent and reliable than the various FTP server/client combos, and of course it is secure, unlike regular FTP. Regular FTP has been around for a long long time, before the days of having to worry about security to the extent in which we do now. It's really about time for it to die.

[stirrell]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Well, if your problem is happening in multiple clients as you are describing it, I personally don't think the problem is with your client.

Is your FTP client in passive or active mode? Passive mode (PASV) chooses a random high port number to connect with while Active mode only connects on port 21. I can't explain your symptoms you are experiencing, but about the only thing you could try would be to switch from active to passive or vice versa. The problem sounds like a buggy FTP server install to me. Is the server using ProFTP? PureFTP? What version?

I've never had any of these problems over SSH - it seems much more consistent and reliable than the various FTP server/client combos, and of course it is secure, unlike regular FTP. Regular FTP has been around for a long long time, before the days of having to worry about security to the extent in which we do now. It's really about time for it to die.

Thanks for your input, Besson. I am using Passive mode, at least in Transmit. The server is using ProFTP version 1.03. The only reason that I am reticent to chalk it up entirely to the server is that I have never had a problem using WSFTP on my old Windows XP machine or on Parallels on this Macintosh.

And I just tried active mode in Transmit and... it worked! So maybe that is the issue. I will keep testing. Thank you for the heads-up, Besson. And I am going to check into SFTP for the new server. Thanks, again, I really appreciate your time and feedback!

[besson3c]

ProFTP 1.0.3 is absolutely ancient, it is up to version 1.3.1 now:

The ProFTPD Project: Home

Running an ancient version of an already insecure network protocol... not good. You may be experiencing a problem with the way your client interacts with this old version of the server.

[stirrell]

Thanks again for all of your help, Besson. I will bring this up with my boss and, hopefully when the new server is set up, we'll have everything up to date and, hopefully, tranferring over SSH.

Just an update - I tried active mode in Transmit and it successfully made a few large transfers. Then it gave a socket error just now. Dang.

[Gavin]

Also look into rsync

it's exactly what you need for periodic backups