Can't connect any FTP servers from my desktop

Question

I've recently purchased VPS and setup virtualmin with all dependencies. I can reach my website, and I can connect via SSH to the server, but I can't connect with ftp from my desktop.

When I'm using http://net2ftp.com it's working fine, when I'm login via SSH to another VPS and then try FTP the first one - it's working fine.

So I've started to test different servers and different clients (ftp wanderer) from my desktop, non of them worked.

I've tried a different internet connetion (totaly different ISP, usb cellular modem) but it also didn't worked.

Then I've tried my virtual machine (VMware Workstation) with the usb modem and it suddenly worked! Both of them (phisical laptop & virtual machine) windows 7, and I've temporarily turned off windows firewall and ESS firewall in both.

I've tried another 2 PCs but no success...

When I'm trying to ftp via cmd it's just can't connect without saying nothing:

C:\Windows\system32>ftp 69.x.x.x
Connected to 69.x.x.x.
220 ProFTPD 1.3.3d Server (69.x.x.x) [.....]
User (69.x.x.x:(none)): <Here I typed my username>
331 Password required for <username>
Password: <I typed my password>
230 User <username> logged in
ftp> pwd
257 "/home/<username>" is the current directory
ftp> ls
200 PORT command successful
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for file list

And here it's just hang, wait forever...

What could be the problem?????

BTW, I've seen the following questions, didn't helped.

1. Can't connect to FTP sites
2. Unable to connect to FTP sites even with Windows Firewall disabled

Answer 1

Just wanted to share in case anyone wonder that it has been suddenly fixed without anything I've done to solve that.

Long afterwards, I found that the issue was with my ISP. They were filtering connections and blocking some of them.

Answer 2

This thread might help : Virtualmin Backup to FTP Server | passive ftp connection problem

Q: When I schedule a backup with Virtualmin (3.79 GPL-1) to backup the files to a (Windows 2008 SP2) FTP server, the backup fails. This is because Virtualmin uses a passive FTP connection, which won't work because this FTP server is behind a firewall and only ports 20-21 are forwarded to the FTP Server. A connection is established (on port 55xxx i see in the backup logs) and times out after that because of the used port. When I use a FTP client on my notebook, on the same network, I notice the same. Only non-passive connections work, with passive FTP connections it times out on the directory listing.

Opening/forwarding ports from 49000-65535 is not an option in this situation. Is it possible to setup Virtualmin to don't use passive FTP, but only ports 20-21? When creating the backup schedule filling in the IP address like: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:21 is not possible, the ':21' is removed after the schedule is saved.

A: you'd probably be better off to install ssh on your WS2008 box.

The explanation as to when it works or doesn't may be as simple as whether the FTP connection is made in active or passive FTP or instead through SSH.

Apart from this, you could try Fix for Filezilla Failing to Retrieve Directory Listing.

Questions:

1. Have you tried Core FTP Lite, downloaded at Core FTP LE 2.2 : free version ?
2. Have you tried to disable all firewalls and antivirus products on your computer?

Answer 3

Welcome to the not-so-well documented world of active & passive FTP. Here's a good read to kinda point you in the right direction: http://slacksite.com/other/ftp.html

Answer 4

Ok, some things to try:

1) Check Internet Options in your Control Panel and see if there is a system-wide proxy set for FTP.

2) Check your router if there is some sort of outgoing block on FTP ports — both 20 and 21. I know you tried more than 1 ISP, but if for some reason the same router was used for both, this is a possibility.

3) Switch to SFTP instead, as it's secure :)

Answer 5

Try running the ftp command with -d for debugging and before you run ls try changing the transfer mode to binary