Sunday, August 26, 2012

Enabling FTP on with Mountain Lion


If you have Lion or Mountain Lion, you may mention that FTP option is gone from Sharing options.

No worries, FTP server is still there, even if it is a regular installation and not Server one.

No enable FTP server, run from Terminal.app

sudo -s launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist

To disable, do unload instead of load.

FTP home directory is a users's home one.




36 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing this Valeri!

    I wanted to run this for about 5 minutes to transfer a file from my network scanner directly to my local machine. (Never had the need before today, so this was easy and fast to enable then disable.)

    Simple and not perfectly explained!

    Thanks!

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  2. Thank you so much... I was trying to move 70 Gbs worth of files from my PC to my Macbook using an FTP client. This made the trick. Thanks!!

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  3. So how do you change the home directory? I want to create a scan repository folder to scan from the copier to a 'Scans' folder on my desktop. I got the scans to work.. they just go to the home directory. THanks for your help.

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    Replies
    1. Desktop is part of your home directory. Just change the folder before uploading. You cannot change one directory I this particular example

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  4. So how would you use FTP on mac?

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    Replies
    1. why i am transferring files by FTP on MAC, it is indeed a different question, and I was not answering it. :P

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  5. Maybe you can help me? I have files automaticly uploading via FTP to an old desktop and the files show up and are displayed in order of upload.

    When attempting this same task on my MBP with this script or OSX server, the files only show up one at a time and any new files only appear when a previous files is deleted.

    Any ideas?

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    Replies
    1. Try to re-upload any of them manually to check an error. I guess it is about permissions.

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    2. Error unloading when trying to unload

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  6. Thanks that worked perfect.

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  7. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I'm very new to using a Mac (a MacBook Pro with OS X 10.8.3) and I've been hoping I could temporarily make it an FTP server because the company I work for manufactures intelligent power distribution units for data centers and our method for flash updating firmware is FTP. I've been using Mac for the first time for only two weeks now. I'm loving it, but I couldn't find anyone that knew how to make it an FTP server. David Pogue's "the missing manual" was useless in this respect, as was one youth at my local Apple store who thought I'd need the Server edition or maybe even a an FTP program, but I finally found your post and it works wonderfully. You are my hero for the week.

    Any experience with USB-to-serial (RS-232) dongles and Mac OS X 10.8.3? As soon as I figure this out I should never need to touch my Windows laptop again.

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    1. Hi Bruce!

      I am glad it helped. As for USB2serial, it works just fine. I am using Hama adapter, but you can use any other that has divers for Mac.

      The drill is quite simple, you need to install the driver. Then once you connect the adapter, it appears as a device that can be accessed from Terminal app. In my case I just type "screen /dev/tty.usbserial 9600" where tty.usbserial is the device name and 9600 is the speed.

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  8. I really, really hate them for removing that option.

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  9. Thank you. Question. How do access other Volumes? Edit plist?

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  10. Thank you very much for this. I've been very frustrated with some changes in Mountain Lion and this is one of them.

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  11. Hi Valerie,

    Thank you very much for this workaround.

    I setup a port forwarding (TCP/21) on my router and I confirmed that the port is open. I still couldn't download the software to my MAC. What credentials (username/pass) is the FTP service expecting? My regular username/password on MAC or it has its own list of users?

    Thanks!!

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    Replies
    1. Your regular username/password. in fact, you can setup a new account with administrative rights if you want.

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  12. How does this work when my username/password/"localhost" doesn't get accepted as valid, even though I damn well know what my username/password is because I use it every time I log into my computer...

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    1. Leslie, is your account login name the same as full name? I guess not. To check if this is an issue, set up a new account and try with it.

      Do not use account name with spaces, might be an issue.

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    2. My login name shows as LDMartin1959, user directory name Leslie. No spaces in either and neither seems to work for me. Could it be that I am running WP under MAMP and that the user name/password for those are different from my Mac user account credentials?

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    3. Use the login name as in /Users/

      Try with a different account. There must be something wrong with the way you authenticate.

      This trick works for everybody but you :-)

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    4. "This trick works for everybody but you :-)"

      You just summed up my life. :(

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    5. Well, I seem to be making SOME progress. I can connect via my FTP program. It just seems WordPress can't connect using the same parameters. I guess this is now a WordPress support issue. Thanks.

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    6. LOL

      "Don't shoot the piano man, he play as best as he can"

      Try your IP instead of "localhost" in wordpress. First your LAN IP, then 127.0.0.1, it might be jsut locahost resolution that does not work

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    7. Okay, I'll give that a shot. I think I already tried that but I'll make sure. Thanks.

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  13. Hi,

    does the command below have to be done for each user as after using it on the main admin account on Mac 10.8.5, the main account credentials are the only ones that seem to work on accessing the folder by FTP:

    sudo -s launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist


    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Never tried that in multi-user environment, but you are correct, if ran from main account, the server will only accept the actual account it was enabled on.

      Due to my info, you still have FTP on oSX server edition, where multi-user scenario seems to be more reasonable

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    2. thank you for your quick reply and for the post as it was very helpful.

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  14. This was EXTREMELY helpful, thank you!

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