[Info-vax] preventing FTP from timing out

Stephen Hoffman seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid
Tue Oct 2 08:53:36 EDT 2012


On 2012-10-02 12:14:27 +0000, Phillip Helbig---undress to reply said:

>   HP TCP/IP Services for OpenVMS Alpha Version V5.4 - ECO 7
> 
> ########################################################
> 
> 421 Service not available, remote server timed out. Connection closed.
> 122054124 bytes sent in 07:56 (250.35 KiB/s)
> 
> What causes this timeout?  (I thought one reason for hash was to keep
> things from timing out.)  The connection is otherwise OK, as far as I
> can tell.
> 
> Is there somehow I can increase the timeout?  At least if something is
> actually being transferred, I don't want it to time out.

This is likely a bug, and not a feature.  And in general, timeouts are 
not something to be adjusted; they're often precariously balanced and 
changes to the defaults can have unexpected repurcussions.

Your network is either screwed up, or (if the timeout is consistent) 
you're dealing with an FTP client or server with a size limit or with a 
bug.

Check the FTP logs on both ends, check the patch levels, etc.  Check 
available space on the target disk, and fragmentation, etc.

And given I routinely get vastly better speeds over WiFi connections, 
this is definitely operating on lower-grade networking hardware.

FTP is a hideous protocol.  It's inherently incompatible with modern 
networks, and it's wildly insecure.



-- 
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