I am scratching my head over a strange ftp issue (working on my bash script). I am connecting from a SLES10 sp4 server via ftp to two MS ftp servers running under XP. Everything on the MS XP boxes is identical as far as settings go (stock IIS/ftp install).

Here is the strange part. After opening an ftp session on each XP box, a ls command lists the remote files in two slightly different formats:

-rwxrwxrwx 1 owner group 123456 Dec 16 2011 1001.mp3
-rwxrwxrwx 1 owner group 123456 Dec 16 13:45 1001.mp3

Note the difference; year vs time. I have double checked both XP machines and both are set to report as UNIX.

Anyone know what could be causing this? Thanks, Chris.

Hi cmosentine,

Welcome to LQ!!!

FTP displays date and time on the basis of source settings (setting on FTP server). Did you check the regional date/time format settings on your XP machines?

Did you try to access MS ftp servers from any other machine? Do you get the same results?

On Linux the entry for the --time-style may have two defined formats: for non-recent and recent files. It looks line in the second case a dedicated format for the recent files was defined. Maybe it can be set somewhere in the IIS too.

usually, when the file is from "this year", the time is displayed, if it's older, the year instead.
e.g.
File from 2011-12-16
-rwxrwxrwx 1 owner group 123456 Dec 16 2011 1001.mp3
File from 2012-12-16
-rwxrwxrwx 1 owner group 123456 Dec 16 13:45 1001.mp3

Maybe that's it.
Cheers, Tom.