Re: ftp can build data connection - masquerading problem?

[Patrick Olson <compman@internetcds.com>]

On Mon, 30 Aug 1999, Guilherme Soares Zahn wrote:

> Hi there,
> 
>     Lately I've been facing a strange and very annoying problem... When
> I try to do FTP from a site, it will almost surely drop my connection
> out when I try to build a data connection (either through a 'get',
> 'retr' or just a harmless 'dir') with a message like:
> 
> ftp> dir
> 200 PORT command successful.
> 425 Can't build data connection: Connection refused
> 
> On other systems I've had a 'address already in use' or something, so I
> felt it could have to do with the IP Masquerading... I can't say for
> sure if it started just after we set our Linux router to do IP
> Masquerading or not, but I feel it was 'almost at the same time', so
> maybe I've just overlooked something when I did that... HTTP connections
> AND apt-get run just fine, though...
> 
> Any ideas??

I have that problem with my IP Masquerading too.  Since I'm too lazy to
fix it, I just tell the ftp program to use passive ftp.  The command
should look like:

ftp> passive

The thing is, you have to do that every time you start the program (or is
it every time you connect to an FTP server) because it doesn't remember. 

Any decent FTP client has a way to do passive mode, so it should work from
other FTP clients as well, such as ncftp and maybe even Windoze garbage.

I'm afraid this isn't the *right* way to fix it, but it makes it work.

Hope this helps,
Patrick