ftp client report UNKNOWN system type

[John Dvorchak]

I have an HPUX 11.11 system that is causing our automated ftp clients fits. When you try to ftp to it everything is normal and it works except it report system type as UNKNOWN instead of UNIX like the HPUX 11.11 boxes. I have searched on the forums for combinations of ftp ftpd UNKNOWN etc. Here is what I get with swlist:

root> swlist|grep -i ftp
PHNE_30990 1.0 ftpd(1M) and ftp(1) patch
PHNE_32449 1.0 bootpd(1M)/DHCP, tftp(1)

Any ideas?

[Jaime Bolanos Rojas.]

John,

Make sure that the ftpd on both systems are HP's, sometimes when one of the is third party causes that error.

Regards,

Jaime.

[John Dvorchak]

They both appear to be the same:

root> what /usr/localcw/opt/nas/sidftpd
/usr/localcw/opt/nas/sidftpd:
$Revision: 92453-07 linker linker crt0.o B.11.30 010914 $
HP92453-02A.11.00 HP-UX SYMBOLIC DEBUGGER (END.O ILP32) $Revision: 75.04 $
wu-ftpd-2.6.2 - sidftpd for largefiles

[spex]

John,

Manually log in via ftp, then issue 'SYST'. If 'UNIX' is returned, the problem is most likely your clients.

PCS

[John Dvorchak]

it still reports unknown:
ftp> syst
215 UNKNOWN Type: L8
ftp>

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Are you doing auto-login? If so then use the -c ftp option to suppress the SYST and TYPE queries -- which is probably a good idea anyway. Your script should be asserting the type of transfer (ASCII or BINARY) regardless of the system type.

[John Dvorchak]

The -c switch didn't seem to change the reponse from the ftp server:

230 User xxxx logged in.
Remote system type is UNKNOWN.
ftp> quit

but thanks for the effort.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Actually, what I meant for you to try was "ftp -nc remote_host"; that will not make any inquiries. Your first command will be "user mickey". The client will not query the system for its type so unknown is okay.

[John Dvorchak]

Thank you all for your suggestions and all of them were good. Here is what we finally found out. The ftpd was compiled with the system type as "unknown" so it didn't know how to respond to the querry. We replaced the binary with one that had UNIX as the system type compiled in.

The best suggestion from was from A. Clay and our appications person has modified his scripts to use ftp -nc and force binary transfer.