FTP/sFTP problem

[Karl Auer]

On Tue, 2018-09-11 at 06:45 -0400, william drescher wrote:
> As of the upgrade to 16.04 LTS I have been unable to use FTP or
> > > sFTP to put files on the server.
> [...]
> what do you suggest for the next step ?

First, describe exactly what happens when you try. Immediate failure?
Error messages? Long pause? Absolutely nothing?

"Unable to use" is about as useful as going to the doctor and saying
"it hurts" :-)
 
- can you connect via ssh using the same username/key as you are using
with sftp?

- try using the command-line sftp client instead

- turn on debugging: "sftp -vvv user at hostname"

- look in /var/log/sshd on the server for any clues

That's a start :-)

HOWEVER: My cursory look at HTML-Ket suggests that it does not actually
support SFTP. And the sshd server definitely does not support FTP. I
would suggest getting absolutely categorical proof that HTML-Kit does
in fact support SFTP before wasting too much more time.

If you need to use FTP (which I very strongly do not recommend outside
your local network), you will need different server software such as
vsftpd.

It's apparently possible (though I have never done it because FTP bah
pfooey) to run passive FTP over an ssh tunnel configured to act as a
SOCKS5 proxy, but I leave that as an exercise for the reader. A VPN
would probably be simpler.

Another alternative is to have a local mirror of your work, and drop it
over to your server via rsync. So if you have e.g. a directory
/var/www/html on your server that you need to update, have a directory
~/html locally and work with that instead. Whenever you want to update
the server, run "rsync -a ~/html/ me at server:/var/www/html"

That works with any directory of course, as long as you have write
access on the server. But you mentioned HTML, so my example assumes a
webserver.

Not sure how multiple users are working with your server; they could
each have a different directory f course.

Anyway, that's all I can think of for now :-)

Regards, K.


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Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer
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