Commonly Asked FTP Questions

> How do I arrange uploading?

To FTP files, you may need the following information:

username/account: XXXXXXX
password: (their password)
hostname: servintfree.net or dcfree.net (depending on which server your site is on)
directory: /usr/home/XXXXXXX/public_html

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>     Subfolder: none (I also tried it with /~XXXXXXX/, ~XXXXXXX and 
> ~XXXXXXX/ ... each time I was told there was no such file)

Herein lies the rub. The file was successfully transferred. However, it
was uploaded to your ~XXXXXXX directory (/usr/home/XXXXXXX) rather than
your ~XXXXXXX/public_html (/usr/home/XXXXXXX/public_html) directory. For
files to be viewable on the web, they must be uploaded into the
public_html directory.

For the sake of convenience, I renamed the existing index page as
index.html.old and moved the new index.html that you uploaded into the
public_html directory. It should be viewable now (although you may need to
flush your browser's file caches to see the changes).

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> Help! I can't log in with FTP.

I've checked the FreeNet FTP server logs for the past few days, and I
haven't seen anyone logging in as "XXXXXXX." Therefore, I think we can
narrow the problem down to the connecting to the server/pre-login stages.

Are you getting a login prompt? If not, then you may not be connected, and
this may be the source of the problem. As you probably know, the DOS and
UNIX standard FTP clients are notoriously misleading in that they will
still "run" even if you aren't connected to anything.

If you can give me the IP address (or at least the provider/IP range) for
where you've been logging in from at home, I can check the logs for that.
If I don't find that in the logs, we can probably conclude that something
is stopping you from getting to the server in the first place. At that
point, we can start going through the process step by step and narrowing
down the possibilities until we've found our culprit.

FOLLOWUP:

In my FTP server logs, I'm seeing a number of successful logins for your
account:

Sep 20 23:08:39 dcfree ftpd[5828]: FTP LOGIN FROM 98CA47B8.ipt.aol.com as
XXXXXXX
Sep 20 23:09:38 dcfree ftpd[5828]: FTP LOGIN FROM 98CA47B8.ipt.aol.com as
XXXXXXX
Sep 20 23:18:18 dcfree ftpd[5872]: FTP LOGIN FROM 98CA47B8.ipt.aol.com as
XXXXXXX
Sep 20 23:19:33 dcfree ftpd[5872]: FTP LOGIN FROM 98CA47B8.ipt.aol.com as
XXXXXXX

and one failed login:

Sep 20 23:18:50 dcfree ftpd[5872]: FTP LOGIN FAILED FROM
98CA47B8.ipt.aol.com, XXXXXXX

So it looks like (at least most of the time) the server is accepting your
login, but not 'acting like it.' I haven't been able to reproduce the
problem, but I'm working on it.

Unfortunately, rather than giving you an answer, all I can do at this
point is ask a couple of questions that may help me figure the root of the
problem out.

1. When you log in, are you seeing the standard dcfree.net FTP 'flag?'
e.g:

Trying 209.50.251.25.21...
Connected to dcfree.net.
220- Welcome to the ServInt FreeNet System (FTP Access)
220- 
220- 
220 dcfree.net FTP server (BSDI Version 7.00LS) ready.

If not, there may be something fishy going on.

2. Can you do a "ftp -d dcfree.net" next time and tell me what the results
you get are? The -d turns on debugging, and should echo back to you what
all of the server responses are. This may help things out significantly.

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> I am having several problems uploading this file. First of all, I can attempt
> to send from home, where I'm using a telephone line, but here at work
> I can't send because we have a firewall and our FTP program is set for
> "auto detect" instead of "unix." Is there anything you can do to give me
> rights so I can FTP from work to www.XXXXXXX.org? 

The "autodetect" feature isn't a problem. We have the FreeNet set up so
that you're allowed to FTP from anywhere - so, if there's a problem
connecting/using FTP from there, it's almost certainly on the firewall end
and not on our side.

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