Challenges getting into the BlueDragon FTP site?

Are you having any challenges connecting to the NewAtlanta FTP site? That's where we offer patches and revisions of BlueDragon (and ServletExec and JTurbo). Again, I'll offer a later note about getting and using those patches.

But assuming you know where they are and how to use them, have you ever had any challenge just trying to connect to the site? Such as getting connected and then getting an error in your FTP client (or when using the FTP protocol in your web browser) such as:

  500 Invalid PORT Command.
  Error opening data socket

In such a case, the problem isn't specific to the NewAtlanta FTP server. It's just that you're trying to connect to an FTP server from inside your firewall. Most FTP clients (web browsers, when you use the FTP protocol) attempt to connect in such a way that the server tries to open a port on your workstation. To prevent that, you need to enable what's called "passive mode" (or PASV) on your FTP client.

In Internet Explorer 6, for instance, this setting is controlled in Tools>Internet Options>Advanced>Browsing>Use Passive FTP. Your FTP client will have a similar settings. Just be aware that if your FTP client shows a check box that's greyed out (as I saw on my CuteFTP client when setting it up for the first time just now), click the checkbox until the checkmark is black, which means you want it enabled for this connection, rather than inheriting some global settings.

Of course, each FTP client is different, so just know that you may find that you need to enable passive mode to connect to the server. And the cool thing is that should you need to FTP to any other servers from within your firewall, this setting will generally be what you'd need to connect to them. The issue isn't tied to the newatlanta.com FTP server. It's just that some readers may not have much occasion to FTP into any servers, or may be doing it from within a firewall for the first time.