I can't use My Cloud Mirror for FTP on the Internet

My Cloud OS 3 Personal & Network Attached Storage My Cloud Mirror
1

I cannot get FTP to work from an external ip. I have followed WD’s instructions. The FTP account is enabled. I have the correct passwords.

Here is the reply seen in Filezilla.  The better-than.tv address is from dyndns.org:

Status: Resolving address of studio5e.better-than.tv

Status: Connecting to 98.164.212.222:21…

Status: Connection established, waiting for welcome message…

Status: Initializing TLS…

Status: Verifying certificate…

Status: TLS connection established.

Status: Connected Status: Retrieving directory listing…

Status: Server sent passive reply with unroutable address. Using server address instead.

Command: MLSD Error: Connection timed out Error:

Failed to retrieve directory listing

Is there a fix or workaround?

Geoff Fox

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Hello geofffox, this is not supported, but let’s see if other users share their advice. 

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So the claim that it has FTP and is reachable from anywhere are correct separately, but not together?  I bought the unit because of those two capabilities.

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geofffox wrote:

So the claim that it has FTP and is reachable from anywhere are correct separately, but not together?  

Well, meaybe yeah depending on your configuration / internet access.

The error message you’re seeing above tells you what you need to know.    The Passive address returned isn’t routable, which means you’re using NAT in your router to route to a private IP space behind it.

Since you’re using NAT, that means you need to either:

  • modify FTP’s configuration to pass the PUBLIC IP space instead of the NAT address.
  • Or, if your router happens to have NAT ALG for Passive FTP, then try enabling it.
  • Or, If your router doesn’t support Passive FTP ALG but does support Active FTP ALG, then don’t use Passive-mode FTP in your FTP client.

All of this is described in various threads you can find via search…

Not everyone uses or needs NAT, in which case, none of the above applies to those folks, and FTP is indeed easily accessed from anywhere.

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5

Thanks, Tony.  I will have to look up all the abbreviations.  :)

Yes, I understand it’s returning the non-routable address.  

What I’ve seen in other messages is it can ftp on the Internet or ftp inside my lan, but not both.  And, of course, I need both.

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geofffox wrote:

 

Status: Server sent passive reply with unroutable address. Using server address instead.

Command: MLSD Error: Connection timed out Error:

This error is typical when you have not configured the passive port range. Make sure you:

  1. From Mirror’s dashboard configure the passive ports , which can be done from the same ftp setup screens as the rest of the ftp setup…just go with the defaults of 50000 to 50999 (I think those are the default values…at least that’s what’s on my EX2…I am confident it works identically on Mirror).

  2. Add port forwardings for that port range (i.e. 50000-50999) on TCP data traffic on your router to go to your Mirror’s internal IP, just the same way you have done for port forwarding of port 21. Internal IPs are what Tony was referring to as NAT IPs…and if you haven’t assigned Mirror a static IP, this IS the best reason why you should.

  3. Choose passive as the transfer mode in filezilla ftp client (see →   http://i.imgur.com/ttQOjw0.jpg )

You will of course be choosing port 21 in filezilla.

If this resolves your issue, please click the star on the left under my username to give me a kudo and mark the post as the solution so others can benefit from it later.

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