backups - part5 - ftp stops working

Posted By Paul Cooper |  last update 03-Mar 2012

ive been using the SCATA livedrive as a backup filestorage system from a number of machines

I couldnt get rsync to back up to a curlftps -mounted remote ftp connection, so opted out of that and now use lftp - a scriptable ftp client as a cronjob that backs up essential stuff to livedrive

. Livedrive has been off-line for a couple of days ( information was on their website - fair enough) , but now they are back in action. For machines that arent on all the time (or regularly) , it does the backup from a terminal 9 this is linux ,after all) or using filezilla and doing a dragndrop dump of the relevant directories. After the livedrive maintainance/upgrade filezilla stopped working and wouldnt produce the remote file listing.

So I try to debug the connection

~$ ftp -d ftp.livedrive.com 
Connected to ftp.livedrive.com.
220 Welcome to the Livedrive FTP Server. Host: L1FTP03
ftp: setsockopt: Bad file descriptor
---> USER XXXXX
331 Username OK, need password
---> PASS XXXX
530 Not logged in
Login failed.
---> SYST
215 UNIX emulated by Livedrive FTP server
Remote system type is UNIX.
ftp> dir
ftp: setsockopt (ignored): Permission denied
---> PORT 192,168,2,12,217,239
200 PORT command successful
---> LIST
530 Not logged in
ftp> 

Googling the error message "ftp: setsockopt: Bad file descriptor" throws up a lot of stuff about firewalls, but ive not changed mine.

There are 2 modes that ftp works in -active and and passive - explanation here -  http://slacksite.com/other/ftp.html

changing filezilla to passive mode ( lftp uses passive mode by default)  and it works again!

So its a firewall change at the livedrive end. Shame they didn't distribute any  information about  it.

 

the next thing to try adn discover the timezone of the livedrive server i connect to , so that the 'newer/updated  only ' option in filezilla will work - it seems to re-transfer everything at the moment.