# FTP server access



## balanga (Aug 7, 2017)

I've set up ProFTPD on a remote FreeBSD VPS and am having problems retrieving files using `wget`. When using a browser I can retrieve them without difficulty. My version of `wget` does not include support for SSL. Could that be the reason or is there some configuration setting I need to change?

I've set up an FTP service on my FreeNAS box where I'm trying to mirror what is on the VPS and have no difficulty there with `wget`. On the remote system `wget` just waits and waits. How do I debug what's going on?


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## SirDice (Aug 7, 2017)

This always helps to explain the difference between active and passive FTP: http://slacksite.com/other/ftp.html


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## balanga (Aug 9, 2017)

I presume the different behaviour is because of differences in proftpd.conf... I don't recall making any changes from the default installation, but since one is installed on FreeNAS, that was configured by FreeNAS. I'll do a comparison.


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## SirDice (Aug 9, 2017)

The "problem" with FTP is the dynamic nature of the data channel. This makes the protocol difficult to firewall. Both passive and active FTP will have a problem if both the client and the server are behind a firewall (or even worse, NAT). You can (partially) solve this on most hardware firewalls by using so-called "helpers".  These actually look in the communication itself and can detect the FTP PORT commands to open/forward ports for the data channel dynamically. On FreeBSD you could use ftp-proxy(8) for this. This is probably what FreeNAS does out-of-the-box.


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