FTP "Help Solve The Mystery"

WD Legacy Products My Book Live
1

Hi, Everybody

Help solve the “How Do I Setup FTP”  on MyBook Live Drive

Sorry in advance!  If I rant too much! I’m frustrated with the ftp settings on the WD MyBook Live Drive. I don’t feel WD doesn’t give you enough options to configure FTP settings.

Any help in the right direction is appreciated.

I’ve been searching my brains out for FTP configuring support.  I’m a newbie. I can’t make sense of anything. HELP!

Please don’t even talk to me about MIONET. Please spare me from death! I’m not paying 7.99 a month. Thank you

very much.

A newbie guide or something I can understand would be appreciated. I need to know which direction to go for getting FTP to work over the internet to outside computers to access my files on the go.

I have checked marked Allow: FTP in my network settings on the MyBook Live Drive. I have DHCP enabled on MyBook Live. I talked to my Internet service provider and they don’t supply static ip’s.

I want to access my files from my WD MyBook Live Drive connected to my Apple Extreme Router to outside computers. ftp://mybookliveuser.com or something. I have Windows 7 and MyBook Live is on all the time connected to the Internet. 

Can you run Filezilla to access files from MyBook Live to outside computers.  If FILEZILLA is the answer how do I configure it properly to work properly with MyBook Live and access FTP over the internet to outside computers.

Again, any Help is apprecitated.

I don’t want:

Google Doc’s

Amazon Cloud Player

I’v heard stuff about these:

Forward Ports

Port 21

Filezilla

FTP client’s

FTP servers

Static IP’s

Passive Mode

MIONET- If it was free would be nice.

2

If you know nothing about Linux, maybe is it even easier to use sftp protocol with My Book Live, not ftp.

I think its less hassle and also its more secure. (ftp sends passwords in  plain text format, sftp is encrypted).

Download FileZilla. Its very cool and free client.

Check this picture from filezilla  - http://s3.imgimg.de/uploads/sftp14b6515bjpg.jpg

Host - enter your external IP.

Port - standart is 22.

User - any username, which you can create using MyBookLive webinterface.

Password - pass for that user

Important that server Type must be as shown in picture !

To make it work you need to forward port 22 on your router to your MyBookLive LAN IP.

I suggest to use static LAN ip for MyBookLive. If you use dhcp for it, then it will change time to time and port forwarding wont work.

Static WAN ip is not required to access your device from internet. Its just you need to know what is your current WAN ip (IP given to you from your ISP). dyndns (google it) or similar services also can be used if your router supports that.

Other thing you need to do is edit file sshd_config file in /etc/ssh/sshd_config and change following line:

AllowUsers root

to

AllowUsers root yourusername

 where “yourusername” is username you created before in webinterface and used in FileZilla as login.

And dont delete root, it must remain there!

To edit sshd_config:

  1. enable ssh access in webinterface (search in forum here - how) (not sure if its still can be done with latest firmwares thou),

  2. log in to shell using programm Putty (or any other terminal client) using root account (search in this forum for default login/password) and use

    pico /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Pico is text editor. if its not installed by default (cant remember), install it with this:

apt-get install pico

And of course dont forget to change default root account password if you will leave port 22 open to internet .

3

OK, in order for the outside computers/device to locate your my book which is inside your house and probably a part of your home network , first it need to know the address of your home network.  That is your IP address (such as 168.12. 23.24)   that your internet provider assigned to you is probably dynamic, meaning that every time you unplug your modem or power goes down in your area, the IP address will change.   There is a service called DDNS to address this.  DynDNS or No-IP comes to mind. Their service is free.  They track those changing IP addresses and easy to remember Url name  (such as myname.domain.com)   will keep pointing to your home router.  Most router is compatible with such services so look up DDNS in our router manual.  

But home router has multiple computers, devices attached  to it, so how does it know when the FTP request comes to it, it knows to forward the request to Mybooklive?   In router setup there is a ‘port forward’ setting you can make.  You will forward port 20~21 to your mybooklive, such as ‘192.168.1.25.’   you can make this local IP address static within MBL set up menu. 

Finally, the FTP daemon that runs inside MLB limit the number of connection from one IP address to one.  Filezilla does not work with this set up so you need to change it to higher number ( I used 6)   you can change it in /etc/vdftpd.conf inside the MLB.  You can’t see it in normal way.  You need to turn on ssh access to the box  by  logging into MBL, then  go to http://your mbladdress/UI/ssh and the hidden menu will appear.  Google mybook live  hack to find more specifics.

So in a nutshell

  1.  get DDNS service and configure your router 

  2. port forward 20~21 to your Mybook live

  3.  adjust vsftpd.config parameters. (this requires SSH connection to the box and touchs on os configuration file)

4

Also as an alternative, take a look at “feature pack” presented here.  This may be all you need.

http://highlevelbits.free.fr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=605&Itemid=80&lang=en