vsftpd - 500 Illegal PORT command. ftp: bind: Address already in use
 

Hi,

I just installed vsftpd on Debian 11 server. I am able to connect to it; however, when I attempt to issue commands such as ls, dir, get or put I get the error below:

I am using UFW and I opened ports 21 and 20:

See setting below in vsftpd.conf:

When I installed ufw, i ran the commands below:

When I disable the firewall, FTP works as expected.

Please assist
Thank you!

It's more complicated than that. You need to specify using passive FTP on the client side.

However, why are you installing FTP at all?

Hi Tubocapitalist,

We use it to transfer non critical files internally only. No external access to FTP at all.

I did not have this issue with CentOS 8 using FirewallD.

Thank you!

Thanks. You'd still be better off using SFTP instead, even for in-house. FTP is a royal pain to set up and even once it is set up there is no way to make it secure. Having it LAN-only helps, but removing FTP takes out even that threat while at the same time saving you a lot of work. Nearly everything made in the last decade supports SFTP now even if it might be known for supporting FTP.

What client software made you reach for FTP instead of SFTP?

We had a RPG programmer who created custom programs on our main frame. One of those programs uses FTP to export a file.

I do not want to configure passive mode therefore, I have two options:

1) disable ufw temporarily to run the RPG program

2) manually transfer the file from the mainframe.

Thank you!

Update: I had to remove Debian 11 and install Debian 10 instead due to other issues.... well FTP is working correctly even with the firewall enabled.
Thanks!