Cannot connect to FTP server

I just upgraded to Tiger on my G4 tower, and I am suddenly having problems connecting to some FTP servers that were working fine before. I am able to connect to one of the web site servers I maintain, but not to the rest. This one server is hosted by a different company than the others.

I tried to connect via Fetch and GoLive CS2, but neither work. In Fetch, I get the error message "The file transfer server could not open a data connection." In GoLive I get a couple of different error messages, depending on the server I'm trying to connect to: one says, "Cannot list folder (602: server stopped responding)" and the other says "Cannot connct to FTP (425: FTP command PORT failed)."

I'm on a Road Runner cable connection.

When it comes to the inner workings of my Mac, I'm not very adept at trouble-shooting and so forth, so if anybody has any ideas on where I need to look to fix this, I would appreciate it very much!

Thanks!

Posted on Jun 15, 2005 6:52 AM

21 replies

Oct 13, 2005 8:51 AM in response to Stee-rider

I'm having the above problem with command line FTP and Adobe GoLive from Mac to the server. Command line works fine from PC, SCO Unix, NetBSD, and FreeBSD. GoLive on PC works fine. Seems to be just a Macintosh problem. Oddly enough, it worked on our "old" server (SuSE 9.3), but after it crashed and we migrated to the new one (SuSE 10.0) our Macs have turned into paperweights 😟

Turning off firewalls on server and client doesn't help. Forcing active mode from command line FTP doesn't help either (just changes the message reported before the directory listing attempt to "EPRT" something). Very, very strange...

RobertJ

Level 4

1,201 points

Oct 13, 2005 11:45 AM in response to anne mcl

I have a G4 tower running 10.4.2. I use Roadrunner. My ftp client is Transmit. I use my Linksys router as my firewall and have the Apple firewall off.

I have no problems using FTP to any of the six servers I connect to.

Based on this thread, seems like some type of OS/firewall issue.

Oct 19, 2005 8:14 AM in response to Brian Knoblauch

Problem solved! Sort of... In order to get it working with the Mac I had to do ALL of the following:

1) Set server to active mode only (keeps clients from being able to use passive mode which I can't get to work at all).
2) Turn off Mac firewall (as many others have mentioned, not happy about having to do this)
3) Turn ON the FTP server on the Mac client! (No clue why, and it's a really horrible thing to have to do, but if I don't do that, it will not work)

odysseus

Level 3

948 points

Oct 21, 2005 10:25 AM in response to Stee-rider

Nevertheless, Amadeus is spot-on. For some reason, making outgoing connections to an ftp server requires that one have incoming connections.

odysseus

Level 3

948 points

Oct 21, 2005 10:27 AM in response to Amadeus

Amadeus, the problem isn't fixed in 10.4.2 😟 In the Firewall prefs, I created a rule to open tcp ports 20-21, 1024-65535 to incoming traffic, but that isn't exactly the same as what you specified via the ipfw command, is it?

What would

ipfw allow tcp from any 20,21 to any 1024-65535 in

look like as a firewall rule in the GUI?

odysseus

Level 3

948 points

Nov 11, 2005 10:38 AM in response to Robert Chaput

Apple hasn't resolved this issue in 10.4.3

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Cannot connect to FTP server