[IUG] FTP Access: simple solution

[kathy dot koch at gm dot com]

Appologies for a somewhat lengthy posting... But some of you may recall my
woes with connecting (or rather not being able to connect) via ftp to our
Innovative Server that arose months ago.  Unfortunately it has taken this
long to find out it really was a very simple solution.  Here is what turned
out to be our solution >

1. As a side note, this was the final answer from Innovative on the
problem.  (Note in second item below that this is not really the answer,
but I wanted to share it with you in case you get or have gotten something
similar in response from them.)

      Yes the iiitcpd  wrappers do indeed disable inbound FTP on port 21.
      This is in place for security purposes (as you can imagin). And as I
      stated
      earlier, III staff nor management will not disable the iiitcpd
      wrappers.

      However, as a Software Only support site your systems administrator
      has the capiility to disable the iiitcpd wrappers and enable the
      "native"
      ftp protocol.  Of course the caveat will be that port 21 will be
      vulnerable
      to outside malicious behavior. So please understand that Innovative
      can not be held responsible for such acts as a result.

BTW while what my contact from iii is saying is true, its obviously not the
answer to  what do I need to do in order to ftp like everyone else.

2. This is what the "real" answer is (found by one of our savvy network
people who just happened to ask the right question and try this even though
she was told it wouldn't work):

When you put in your IP address in whatever you are using to FTP, you need
to put a space and 1021 after the URL (e.g. if URL is mylibrary.here.com
then you would put in for hostname.  If you are using command mode ftp, you
need to telnet rather than ftp to the IP.

            telnet mylibrary.here.com 1021

      To clarify, if you are trying a command mode ftp >

            This doesn't work -- ftp 123.123.12.12
            This doesn't work -- ftp 123.123.12.12 1021
            This "DOES" work -- telnet 123.123.12.12 1021

3.  So if you haven't tried this or are having trouble ftp'ing, the steps
are "almost" what is outlined on page #105618 of the user manual with just
the caveat that while they do mention to set your FTP Connection Port to
1021 -- they don't tell you how to do that if your package doesn't have a
place to enter the port or if you are trying native command mode.

Here are the steps from the manual with my specific notes (the user manual
goes into more detail on each of these items and seems to be pretty
self-explanatory, but feel free to email me if you get stuck):

      1) create your local work directories on your pc

      2) telnet to the server and put in the appropriate IP addresses
and/or IP ranges in the LIMIT NETWORK ACCESS table
             (this is very important as you will not be able to ftp if you
don't have this part done)

      3) set your live and staging login passwords
            (if you are not able to change these passwords, you'll need to
contact innovative -- we originally had a problem with this as well)

      4) configure your program to access the server -- here's what I used
for Dreamweaver for the webserver info >
            a) Server access: FTP
            b) FTP host:   name.of.host 1021
            c) Host directory: [leave blank]
            d) Login: liveftp
            e) Password:  [whatever you created for your login password in
step 3 above]
            f) Use Passive FTP (checked)
                  (I know that some sites had some issues with using
passive or not, but Passive seems to work fine for my system)

The big confusion and lack of communication that came about with all of
this is that, as noted, the manual does say to enter FTP Connection port as
1021 for your configuration settings. Well that's fine and dandy, but
Dreamweaver (at least my version) doesn't ask for you to fill in the port,
therefore it needs it after the hostname. I had initially tried that but
erred by puting a colon (instead of just a space) before the port.

Plus straight ftp'ing using command mode is going to port 21 which is
disabled so that wasn't even a helpful workaround. And nowhere do they
mention that you need to telnet if you are using command mode.

So we are all set here. Thank you to everyone who responded to my initial
query on this.  And while I know that some of you are probably finding
uglier reasons for ftp not working (firewall issues and such), I hope the
information above helps someone.  I will leave to the ether what my opinion
of innovative's "help" was.


Kathy Koch
Systems Librarian
GM Information Research
phone: 517-424-5533
cell phone: 517-403-4622
email: kathy dot koch at gm dot com