Problems connecting to a Mac OS X machine via FTP

Question

I have many problems with my Mac OS X. The system is only reachable via SSH, but not with FTP and not with SMB. So I tried to concentrate on FTP, seems easier to debug and may be it's one problem for both services.

First I enabled ftpd with:

sudo -s launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist

Then I try to ftp. But nothing. I got the standard error: Operation timed out.

After that I tried it again and made a tcpdump on the MacBook Pro. Looks fine for me:

tdmacpro:~ root# tcpdump port 21
tcpdump: data link type PKTAP
tcpdump: verbose output suppressed, use -v or -vv for full protocol decode
listening on pktap, link-type PKTAP (Packet Tap), capture size 65535 bytes
17:32:53.539323 IP 192.168.0.58.49191 > 192.168.0.2.ftp: Flags [S], seq    2091779555, win 65535, options [mss 1460,nop,wscale 3,nop,nop,TS val 271391148 ecr 0,sackOK,eol], length 0

So the packets are reaching the MacBook Pro, but it did not answer.

After that I created a new virtual machine on my MacBook Pro to be sure that no switch makes any problem. Then the ftp client was in my virtual machine. But same error.

After that I tried a ftp user@MBP_IP, again same error.

After that I disabled fptd with

sudo -s launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist

and started the ftpd manually with

/usr/libexec/ftpd -d -D -l -U

again the same problem.

Then I used another terminal and made a:

ftp localhost

This works. So I think the ftpd is configured properly. But I also controlled the ftp.plist with a new installation. The same content.

So is there anybody out there who has any further suggestions how to isolate the problem or how to solve it?

Answer 1

You are attempting to connect via this:

ftp localhost

When I believe you want sftp which is the SSH variant of ftp that everyone/everything uses nowadays; non-SSH ftp is just too vulnerable. So try this instead:

sftp localhost

Or this:

sftp user@localhost

Answer 2

So I solved the problem. There was another file in the user LaunchDaemons directory. This file had wrong startup command line switches. After deleting this file the access worked.