FTP Failure from remote server

[John Spiegel]

Hi All,

I've been having a strange problem for some time with ftp'ing a file from
our externally housed and managed Win2K webserver. About 60% of the time, I
get about 125K of the file (currently a bit over 1 MB) then it hangs. I
have the same problem when using the CLI's or IE's FTP functions. What
makes this particularly odd to me is I've never had a similar issue with any
other file, larger or smaller, from the same server.

I've tried making a copy of the file, deleting the original then renaming
the copy back to the original with the general idea being perhaps there's
something strange about its physical location on disk, but that has not
helped either.

Any ideas?

TIA,

John

 

[Gerry Voras]

You might want to check the file integrity of that file you're attempting to
download. Might be a little tough, since its home is a remote box.

Have you tried dumping it to another ftp server as an intermediary? Or
tried zipping it or compressing it before downloading?

 

[John Spiegel]

Thanks, Gerry!

I have tried neither. I could try ftp'ing from another server easily
enough. I think I could put together a web service that could be called
remotely then have it initiate a put rather than getting from this side
(though I don't know if FTP internally does the same thing).

Any ideas on how I would zip/compress from a remote location?

Thanks again,

John

 

[Greg Stigers]

ftp problems are challenging to troubleshoot, since the problem could be on
either end, or the network itself. Since it is just this file, I would
wonder if some process such as a back up or AV scan is grabbing the file
while you are trying to get it.

As for compressing before send, there really aren't good ways to do that.
NT4 ResKit offers a rshsvc, but I would not be in a hurry to open it up on
an exposed server, and doubt your service provider would, either. Will the
service provider compress it for you, preferably as a seperate process at
the tail of its creation? Even better, how about having them initiate the
transfer?

Greg Stigers
this space for rent

 

[John Spiegel]

Thanks, Greg.

I had someone FTP the same file from another location (taking our firewall,
etc.) out of the equation and they had no problems. I also used an FTP
client (AceFTP) to try a bit of a different method. It had the problem.
However, I could restart and have it pick up where it left off.

Anyway, I'll play around from time to time, but this has become more pain
than it's worth to figrue out. The file is a table that we really should
just be pulling individual records from anyway so putting the related web
service into place is now higher on the priority list.

Thanks again,

John