VMS FTP access by Dreamweaver

[Richard D. Piccard]

We are running HP TCP/IP Services for OpenVMS Alpha Version V5.4 - ECO 5, on an AlphaServer DS10 617 MHz running OpenVMS V7.3-2. Upgrades to the software are certainly possible, if newer versions would solve this problem.

The primary application is Web serving (we use the OSU DECthreads server -- thanks, again, to David Jones).

Many users are happily uploading their files from Windows using WS_FTP or FileZilla; many other users are happily uploading their files from Macintosh using Fetch.

All of the people who have tried to upload from Windows or Macintosh using the FTP that is internal to Dreamweaver report failure, as do those who attempt using the FTP that is internal to Microsoft FrontPage for Windows. Now, I really don't care to pollute our Web pages with the HTML that FrontPage emits, although I would be willing to accept a fix to the Dreamweaver problem that lets FrontPage work, but Dreamweaver's HTML isn't that bad, and I would certainly like to make that work.

I would be pleased to learn that there is a combination of settings that will permit WS_FTP, FileZilla, and Fetch to continue to work while also enabling Dreamweaver to work.

Failing that, I would be pleased to learn any clues to the sources of the problem(s) that anyone can provide, for me to submit to the developers of Dreamweaver to encourage them to enhance their product.

[Steven Schweda]

Without knowing what the Dreamweaver FTP
client code is doing, it's a little tough to
make suggestions. You might get some clues
from the log files, most likely
SYS$SYSDEVICE:[TCPIP$FTP]TCPIP$FTP_RUN.LOG.

Knowing nothing, the most likely
explanation is that this FTP client is
unable to cope with the file listing format
used by the VMS FTP server
(VMS-DIRECTORY-like, instead of
UNIX-ls-like).

One potential solution is to use a different
FTP server on your VMS system. Without
switching to a different TCP/IP package, the
only one known to me is HGFTP (formerly known
as MGFTP, I believe):

http://vms.process.com/scripts/fileserv/fileserv.com?HGFTP

I believe that it offers a UNIX-like file
listing option, which should satisfy more FTP
clients than the TCPIP server's VMS-style
file listing. The price is right, anyway.

[Adrian Graham_1]

Dreamweaver is notoriously bad for FTP problems, particularly under Mac OSX. 2 things to check are to make sure you're not trying to use either Passive or secure FTP on the 'remote server' property page under site management.

There's also a 'test' button to check the connection.

This is for DW8 but is also true for older versions.