Hello everybody

I have been having some problems with FTP lately.... Ever since I got my SDSL, actually.

I am running VSFTPD on my Fedora Core 3 server - It is connected to a swich which is connected to my SDSL terminator. My m0n0wall is connected to the switch, too.

The server has a static IP address - 216.177.19.108

Anyway, when I get on a Windows based computer (hooked to a cable modem, not the DSL) and open IE and go to my FTP server, it asks for a password but times out. If I open a command line and connect, it goes just fine and lists the directory.

It seems to be a problem with listing directories, it'll just hang and time out.

I tried to disable passive mode in IE, it will work just fine - But when I tell others to do it, it doesn't work - Maybe I just did something different - lol

Anyway - Is there any way that anybody knows of to make this more... stable? Post if you have any more questions!

Thanks!
-Equin

you need to configure vsftpd to allow passive connections to your server, so that clients that are behind a firewall can open data connections properly.


In short, this consists of opening a range of unpriviliged ports to your server (I use 50000 to 50200) and telling vsftpd that this range is opened for passive connections. Here is a snippet from my vsftpd.conf, the lines that i needed to change or add to get passive ftp working:

pasv_enable=YES
pasv_min_port=50000
pasv_max_port=50200
pasv_address=72.224.117.144


the first line tells it to enable passive connections (duh)
the next two are the high and low end of the range of ports to use. If you leave these lines out, it will assume that any ports > 1024 can be used
the last is the address that it should send to the client computers for them to connect to. If you do not have this, the server will likely send out it's LAN address if it is not directly connected to the internet.

If you google for "vsftp passive configuration" and the like, you will find a ton of information about this.

I'll try to watch this thread if you have any more questions, I spent a lot of time figuring this out and I'm pretty confident in what I think I know now :P