UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

We are getting the following error while in the middle of an ftp with a remote server

transfer.07-25-02-124529:425 Can't build data connection: Operation already in progress.

This can happen in the middle of a successful connection... we might transfer several files successfully before and / or after this error.

Any ideas??

We end up losing a file transfer when this happens.

What we do, is go to the remote site, retrieve a list of the files with certain id in the file name so that we know are ready to be picked up into a file on our side.
We feed this list through a do process to pick up each file and transfer it.
We then rename the file to something else so we do not pick it up again.
The file on the remote site gets renamed ok, but the file does not transfer to our site.

Any insight would help.

Thanks

What OS and version and what FTP and version?

digital unix 4.0D
Not sure what ftp....

I could not find anything on the error you are receiving - suggest two things:

Upgrade - your version of Tru64 is rather old and probably past end of life.

Do some testing - find out if the file that fails is at a certain point (already transfered xxx,xxx,xxx bytes - connection is closed and reopened possibly? A limit on your system or the one you are sending to). Connection opened over a certain amount of time?
Check the error logs of any systems that deal with the traffic (firewalls, routers...) at the time. Have your network folks get involved - they may see what is happening. Use snoop (if it's called that) to check the packets being passed between the two systems - it sounds like an error in where the two servers are at in the passing of the file - one is waiting for ack and doesn't get it (dropped somewhere) and so it fails but the other server believes the file is done and starts sending the next.