Yesterday I received an email about a client having problems connecting to their CS FTP gateway. The first thing I did to troubleshoot the FTP gateway is recycle the FTP service. One thing about the FTP gateway is that if the connection to it is not disconnected properly, i.e. if you close your FTP client before disconnecting from the server, then the server will leave that connection open for about 20 minutes. This can cause issues when there are only 5 licenses for clients to connect. Once I had the service recycled, I connected to the FTP with our administrative testing account. I was able to connect right away, but I wasn’t able to see the listed contents of the directory. I changed my FTP client (Filezilla) to use passive mode and I was able to connect and list the contents of the directories. I then tried to upload a blank text file to the root directory, and it failed to upload. I looked in the CS FTP log and it showed “access denied”. Well thanks to Ken I now have an abundance of answers as to why my upload didn’t work.
The first reason is that CS won’t upload blank files, so you have to at least put some data in the file.
The second reason is that CS won’t upload .txt files. Just create a text file, add content to it and then change the extension to .pdf. CS will then allow it to upload.
The third reason for the upload problem was the location that I was trying to upload to. Let me explain. As far as CS is concerned the FTP root directory is a virtual directory. Files that are being uploaded must belong to a CS Folder. Basically, what that means is that in CS, File Groups are created in either the Files or Photos sections. Under the File Group we create a folder. This folder is the location where we have to upload the files.
Example:
In Photos I create a File Group named “Vacation Pics”. Then under “Vacation Pics” I create a folder named “Summer 2007”. If I wanted to upload pictures to this folder the directory path in the FTP gateway would be this: photos\vacation pics\summer 2007. If you attempt to upload the pictures at the root, photo or vacation pics levels then the upload will fail because the photos are not being placed in a CS folder. Well, I hope this helps someone else, because I sure learned something from it.
Robba