Fedora Core 4-"FTP: connection refused" problem

[Vijayasekar Rajsekar]

Doing a FTP from WinXP to Fedora 4 gives "FTP: connection refused". Currently I use sftp and ssh to connect and transfer file from WinXP. Telnet also gives a message "could not open connection to the host, on port 23: connect failed". I have tried this after disabling Fedora firewall. "/var/log/messages" doesn't give any access errors. Attempted FTP to itself within Fedora and get this message.
------------------------------------------
220 (vsFTPd 2.0.3)
530 Please login with USER and PASS.
530 Please login with USER and PASS.
KERBEROS_V4 rejected as an authentication type
331 Please specify the password.
230 Login successful.
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
----------------------------------------------
How do I proceed to debug this problem? This is my database and webserver which requires FTP access to upload files by outside users.

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

Shalom Vijayasekar Rajsekar,

By default telnet is not configured on Fedora core. Its configured by changing disable=yes to disable=no in the telnet file in /etc/xinetd.d and running the service xinetd restart command.

The ftp problem is more complex, because I believe it IS configured by default.

service vsftpd status

If it says its running you should get a process id. If its not running the config file is /etc/vsftpd/vsfptd.conf

Another issue is the default ftp client in Windows pretty much sucks. Try a different ftp client to see if you have any better results.

If you still get connection refused, try these general steps:

service vsftpd restart

check iptables firewall and see if its blocking ftp. Its pretty easy to let that happen when a system is installed. If ports 20 and 21 are blocked, you will need to make sure traffic on these ports is accepted.

I see you have already played with iptables.

Make sure the entry for fpt in /etc/services has not been changed.

Lastly check with network administration and see if ftp has been disabled or blocked.

SEP

[Alexander Chuzhoy]

thing to check:
1. service iptables stop (to stop the iptables if running)
2. check /etc/hosts.deny (if there's a blocking entry

3. /etc/xinetd.d/telnet if there's an entry that allows access only from certain addresses.
4. check /etc/xinetd.conf also for restricting entries.
Hope it helps.

[Vijayasekar Rajsekar]

Thanks guys. Since I can use 'ssh', telnet will not be enabled. But FTP was my top priority and I can do it now after commenting out "root" in '/etc/vsftpd/user_list' and 'ftpusers'. I don't want to allow root FTP access. Why should WinXP user do a root FTP access?

[Alexander Chuzhoy]

WINXP doesn't have to connect as root.
if you have users deinfed on this ftp you can login as on of them ...


You can also try sftp (secured ftp client. Its third party utility which will have to be installed on XP),thus disregarding the need for unsecured ftp...

[Delrish]

How did you connect to ftp server from windows XP?
If you type "ftp://ipaddress" in your ie, you made a mistake. because the above url use anonymous user account for connecting to FTP server and you get the error becuase you do not install required packages for anonymous ftp. you have to use "ftp://username@ipaddress" in you ie and username should be an existed user in your system.

Alireza

[Vijayasekar Rajsekar]

I am not using anonymous FTP, instead using Windows command terminal to do a FTP to Fedora server. I am going to setup an anonymous server later on.