Critical VSFTP Problem

[hamidr]

Hi dear itrc members.
I have an environment in which I'm running VSFTP on two bl35 servers running rhel4 u4.
And our organization has a critical software which uploads business files to the ftp server for later processing. Each file has the maximum size of 200k. Most of the times our files get corrupted. The links between branches and our data center do not show much packet lost. Can anybody help please?
I'm getting fired if I can't solve the problem.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

I don't know why are are blaming vsftpd.

Its a very reliable, scalable product.

To be safe, remove the binaries with rpm -e and re-install if you wish.

Then maybe do a normal investigation of your system /var/log/messages /var/log/secure and try and find the source of the problem before you point fingers.

enable logging in the vsftpd.conf file to a separate file, that will help.

Also, if you are uploading binaries with the windows ftp client, it defaults to ascii and any procedures/scripts need to issue a binary command before doing the put, otherwise, corrupt file city?

So: vsftpd problem or a windows problem?

Investigate before you conclude.

I'm trying to be a little funny, but seriously what evidence do you have that its a vsftpd problem?

SEP

[Ivan Ferreira]

>>> Each file has the maximum size of 200k. Most of the times our files get corrupted.

¿What kind of corruption are you talking about?

[hamidr]

Thanks for reply. What I mean by corruption is that for example the md5 checksum of files in each side is not the same. I think it's a rare problem. Is there a better solution rather than FTP? We can even pay the price for changing the protocol or maybe mechanism.

Thanks.

[Ivan Ferreira]

¿Are you using binary or ascii transfer method?

[hamidr]

We use binary and the files are in binary format.

[Ivan Ferreira]

¿How do you get the md5sum at the source system, is this a unix system also or a windows system?

¿Have you tried with scp instead of ftp?

¿Have you tested with different type of files?

[skt_skt]

enable the ftp logging this way

â ¢ Update /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf with xferlog_std_format=NO from xferlog_std_format=YES


When enabled, all FTP requests and responses are logged, providing the option xferlog_std_format is not enabled. Useful for debugging.

Default: NO

â ¢ Add log_ftp_protocol=YES at the end of /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf

â ¢ Uncomment xferlog_file=/var/log/vsftpd.log on /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf

Default log file is /var/log/xferlog

â ¢ Restart the vsftpd service

[hamidr]

My clients are windows. I have the md5sums.exe and it works correct producing the exact same result for the same file as the linux md5 command.

I tested the ftp inside the data center. Does SCP check for the crc errors?

[Ivan Ferreira]

Last time I had problems transferinf with FTP from windows to unix, was a "client ftp" problem and not server related.

For example, downloading a file with "filezilla" has problems, downloading from command line the file was downloaded correctly.

You should try doing FTP from the command line itself.