Outbound FTP broken on PPP?

[grmensz]

I've tried to transfer files to another system over a PPP link and every method fails. Inbound transfers work fine.

command line ftp hangs...
copying to mac.com using iDisk hangs...
copying to a site using Transmit hangs...

Isn't anyone else having this problem?

Gary...

[endian]

the problem is most likely with your ppp connection then. idisk has nothing to do with ftp

[grmensz]

Fair enough. However, this problem only occurs in OS X. No problem connecting to the same service provider in 9.0.4.

Interestingly, these processes either time out or hang. But I can continue browsing and can start new sessions and transfer small files.

Still sounds like an OS X issue to me.

Originally posted by endian
the problem is most likely with your ppp connection then. idisk has nothing to do with ftp

[sys]

This is an OS X issue, so far as I can tell. Uploading any large segment of data over a dialup connection dies. Extremely frustrating.

Anyone know of even just a reason why the heck this happens?

[scruffy]

This may or may not be the same problem I was having. I am using ADSL, though it would be the same with any connection. This would be a problem if you have turned on your firewall, say using brickhouse.

The problem is that ftp opens a port for data transfer on the client machine, and the server machine connects to it. If your firewall is blocking that port, then of course it won't work. You have to use "passive mode" ftp, where the port is opened on the server, and the client connects to it.

You can do this with command-line ftp by issuing "passive" as the first command after connecting to a server.
If you use wget, you can invoke it as "wget --passive-ftp ftp://ser.ver/path/to/file"

Almost all ftp servers are capable of doing passive mode ftp.

[sys]

No, this is not a passive/firewall issue. The transfer starts, but dies after up to 120k. So far as I can tell this effects all protocols/services. Uploading small amounts of data works, such as GET requests for web pages, but any large block (at a guess, 20k+) fails. I smell a rat in PPP Connect....