UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello, sorry in advance, I'm a first time poster and somewhat new to UNIX (Mac OS X) I've searched on your boards and have been unsuccessfull in finding information on this. I have found some info at Google but not enough to validate my stance in a debate.

I'm trying to FTP into a server and the responsed server gives me:

230-No directory! Logging in with home=/

I cannot perform a "ls" or "dir" without it hanging. Basically can't see anything.

The administrator also states that I don't have a "home" directory and once I log in I will be placed into a "shared" directory with other users. I've yet to successfully view anything.

The admininstrator has told me its my FTP clients or my firewall blocking FTP traffic. I've been unsuccessfully to log into his server with a number of FTP clients, command lines, 2 different locations, 3 different OS (Windows2000, Linux and MacOSX) and all have reported the above response.

I believe the error is Unix administrator issue and not my FTP clients (which all do work on different FTP sites) The administrator is stating that its not their site. I just don't know enough Unix to converse efficiently.

Who wins?

My guess is that you're trying to use passive mode ftp and the server doesn't support passive mode. Open a connect to the server and type "rhelp". Does the list of commands include PASV? (The list of commands should be returned back down the control connection so this should work.)

If that's not it, you will need a network engineer with a sniffer to watch the packets and see who is fumbling. It may indeed be a firewall issue. You are ok when the server and client establish a control connection. But you are locking up when the client and server attempt to establish a data connection.

Hello, Just checked again and I've tried passive and active mode, and yes the server does support passive.

I've also tried from 2 completely different locations with the same result:

230-No directory! Logging in with home=/

And all not displaying the directory contents. Its hard for me to imagine that's its my end when the result is the same from 2 locations.

Don't let that message throw you. It's not related to your problem although it may indicate another problem once you can establish a data connection. And like I said, you now need to to capture and decode the packets to see what's going on. This may be a firewall issue on his end.

Thanks Perderabo, I'll do. I'll see if I can find some sniffing software now.

The 'no home' message you are seeing is because the admin on the other end doesn't know what he's doing. A home directory hasn't been setup for the account you are logging in under, so it defaults to /, which usually isn't a good idea.

If you are able to ftp to other sites successfully then the problem isn't on your end. Its on the server side and that admin needs to do the debugging of his setup.

And a bit of a rant -- ftp is insecure! If you are using an account and password you are at the least revealing this info to anyone sniffing in-between. If this login and password is the same as your login/email to the server then you have just given away the farm to anyone listening in.

Use ssh, scp, sftp instead. Lobby your sysadmins to do the same.

bcl

bcl, do you use SMTP or IMAP for mail? If yes to either, then you're doing the same thing.

Unless of course you're one of the few clients using Secure [SMTP|IMAP]...

Also, ssh is insecure because it's got so many darn security holes...
http://www.sans.org/top20/#index
ssh is higher up than FTP, even...