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Avoid Finder FTP services in 10.2 Internet
This is an odd hint for macosxhints; I'm recommending that you do not use a feature of the system!

The 10.2 release of OS X features a potentially amazing time-saving feature: the ability to mount FTP servers in the Finder. You simply enter ftp://name.of.server in the Go -> Connect to Server dialog, and you should see the server on the desktop.

I have attempted to connect to a number of FTP servers from three different Macs, and have achieved only one consistent result: a hard lock-up of the machine. I was able to make a connection on one trial, but every other time I tested this, I wound up with some form of a locked system requiring a hard reboot.

I'm not sure if others have had better experiences than I, but based on my tests of Finder-level FTP, I can't recommend it as a usable tool at this point. For now, stick to your FTP programs to connect to the FTP servers!

Update: I was able to connect once when I included the trailing slash in the URL. I thought I was on to something, but a second attempt on the same machine resulted in the spining Aqua blob of death...]
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Avoid Finder FTP services in 10.2 | 30 comments | Create New Account
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FTP on Finder: Works great
Authored by: MaxMarino on Sat, Aug 31 2002 at 10:29AM PDT
Heya, I know you will not like this but there is something wrong with your machine/configuration, not the ftp support in Finder under OS X 10.2.

I use it all the time since a week now, I am currently in Europe and the ftp servers I use in the US show up in few seconds. I navigate, use those folders practically as if they are local. Worked as a charm from day one (of 10.2)

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No Lockups, Just doesn't work.
Authored by: dricci on Sat, Aug 31 2002 at 10:35AM PDT
Well, that's odd. I don't have total lockups, but the FTP doesn't work for me with my web host. Still have to use RBrowser Lite... I've heard from a lot of people that it just doesn't work, or works poorly... so I think this will have to be an area Apple focuses on for the next update.

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Uh, no, it's a known bug
Authored by: nichrome on Sat, Aug 31 2002 at 10:36AM PDT
Well, I'm sorry to say that your claim is incorrect, there's nothing wrong with the reporter's setup (you're sorry, I'm sorry, everyone's sorry). This is a known issue in the Finder, and is causing hard freezes all over Mac-dom. Including all three of the machines I have access to. Hopefully 10.2.1 introduces a fix (although from what I can tell, the development versions of 10.2.1 -- 6D builds -- don't currently contain an updated ftp component, at least not yet).

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Success - kinda sorta
Authored by: Harold on Sat, Aug 31 2002 at 10:36AM PDT
I tested this by connecting to a (Debian/GNU) server at work because this would indeed be potentially useful.
I had success in connecting to a server (I tested four times), however all items were owned by root/wheel and the "disk" was mounted read only. This would mean I could only use it to get files and not put them.

I'll stick with Fetch, which is very good in it's own right.

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FTP - Finder
Authored by: crarko on Sat, Aug 31 2002 at 10:39AM PDT
There is a thread in the System Forum about this. It appears people have had limited success with it, at best.

I'd guess it's not finished, which is why Apple hasn't ballyhooed this feature any.

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FTP - Finder
Authored by: nichrome on Sat, Aug 31 2002 at 10:42AM PDT
They do mention the feature on their OS X page, so they apparently figured that it works well enough to warrant some ballyhooing. Guess they were wrong.

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FTP - Finder
Authored by: barone rosso on Sat, Aug 31 2002 at 1:19PM PDT
delete com.apple.nsl.ui in your ~/Library/Preferences folder

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No help...
Authored by: robg on Sat, Aug 31 2002 at 4:33PM PDT
Finder FTP still crashes my iBook.

-rob.

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FTP - Finder
Authored by: jokke on Sat, Aug 31 2002 at 8:43PM PDT
Works for me now. I had a hard crash first time I tried it, but after trashing that file, everything works like a charm. Man, I've been requesting that feature for years and finally...it's here!

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FTP Finder
Authored by: MaxMarino on Sat, Aug 31 2002 at 11:15AM PDT
Since I do not see (yet) an authentication login panel to connect on the ftp server from the Finder I would be very scared if it had open in Write mode. You access anonymously: I bet the server allows those connections as being Read-Only and nothing more.
I use ftp as FTP program. The finder makes for navigation and retrieve of files very easy. Dragging a folder from the Finder on to the terminal window allows me to operate effortlessly even on the deepest directory tree: no need to type long locations.
I got no looks/slow-downs or other things like that. Maybe next releases will allow to authenticate on ftp servers as well. For the time being what I do see is steps in the right directions.
Too bad some people have look-ups. It should not happen.
I got reading here and there in various forums that people tend to not install Developers Tools and some even say they have not allowed BSD system being updated because they use a Mac not a Unix computer.
Not claiming that anyone here is doing this but ftp (and other services) is not Mac stuff, it needs - in order to work properly - a fully fledged Unix environment with libraries and all. Have you tried looking on the Console logs to see why the look-ups crashes happen?
I even read about people complaining about gcc compilers not working (for example on Fink mailing lists), or trying out ssh, telnet, etc, but knew nothing about Developer Tools and such. :}

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FTP Finder
Authored by: ahole on Fri, Nov 22 2002 at 5:15AM PST
er... well:
ftp://user:pass@server/
or ftp://user@server/
and wait for password prompt

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Works to an OSX box...
Authored by: cparker on Sat, Aug 31 2002 at 11:45AM PDT
I just tried to connect my eMac this way to my other OS X box (8600 running 10.1.5) and it worked fine. Prompted me for name and password, and then mounted the drive fine. BUT, it mounted it read-only. I couldn't copy anything even to places I should be able to... I could read from it just fine...

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Works here...
Authored by: smith on Sat, Aug 31 2002 at 11:50AM PDT
OK, I'm a sucker, but I had never heard of this being a feature of OS X 10.2 so I thought, what the heck... Tried it, and it works perfectly. I tried on another OS X machine (10.1) and received a standard user login dialog box -- presumably because anonymous ftp is not available. On the other machines that allow anon ftp, I was logged in immediately without the dialog box and presented with whatever anon ftp collection they had available. Tried it with linux and solaris servers. Seemed to work well and quickly, although I don't know that this would be my preferred way to browse an ftp server...

For what it is worth, this is an extremely "clean" install -- I *just* installed OS X, and I haven't installed anything else.


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Works here...
Authored by: leenoble_uk on Sat, Aug 31 2002 at 12:01PM PDT
Just an observation, but on those servers which allow anonymous ftping for which OSX does not display a login/pass box, and you want to input one, try typing them into the connect to server box:
ftp://username:password@server.name
the same way you would in a web browser.

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Login Problems
Authored by: pal05 on Sat, Aug 31 2002 at 12:52PM PDT
For the Login Problems whith Anonymous Server yust try
ftp://USERNAME@SERVERADRES

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It Works for Me
Authored by: jonro on Sat, Aug 31 2002 at 2:01PM PDT
I was very pleased to find that you can mount FTP directories directly from the Finder. It works for me, but very slowly. I'm still using RRbrowser most of the time because it's at least 10 times faster than the Finder's FTP function. I hope Apple is aware of the performance issue.

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Spinwheel of death
Authored by: hombre on Sat, Aug 31 2002 at 2:13PM PDT
I reminded of a link I once ran across that said \"Don\'t Click Me!\" Naturally, I clicked on it, and was taken to an \"Internet addiction\" site.

:/

Needless to say, I tried this as well and was rewarded with a lockup for my efforts. I had connected to ftp.apple.com easily, but trying to view the contents of one of the directories was my undoing. This is not surprising to me, given my slow connection, but I gather this fails for many with high-speed connections, though no one has stated this explicitly. Surely Rob has DSL or something.

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Cable modem...
Authored by: robg on Sat, Aug 31 2002 at 2:58PM PDT
It dies just as nicely on my cable modem as it does on your slower connection :-).

-rob.

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Well, it half worked!
Authored by: lewchenko on Sat, Aug 31 2002 at 4:10PM PDT
Just tried it with my UK FTP account.

No hard lockups etc, but once connected, and the finder window appeared .. the window was blank, with no directories.

A bit poor of apple to release something so obviously shoddy !

I\'ll stick with Captain FTP, which to be honest is a really decent FTP client anyway..

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Works For Me...
Authored by: drgardner on Sat, Aug 31 2002 at 5:19PM PDT
Works great for me - 10.2 on a Pismo. A little slow, but the system is pretty well maxed out and I'm on a dial-up link. It's not going to replace NetFinderX for me, at least at the moment, but it's a handy feature.



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Doesn't work but doesn't crash either...
Authored by: Mithrandir on Sat, Aug 31 2002 at 5:36PM PDT
After entering in my ftp address in the Connect to... window I am prompted for my username and password which seems to be accepted but no mount is ever made. Instead a new Finder window opens to my /Volumes directory. Which does not contain a folder to my ftp server.

Very strange...

M


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it worked for me...
Authored by: meancode on Sat, Aug 31 2002 at 5:38PM PDT
it worked on every ftp server i connect to on a normal basis. this is cool! great top Rob!

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FTP for Finder works fine
Authored by: aranor on Sat, Aug 31 2002 at 6:23PM PDT
Well, it works fine for me. I'm running on a T1, and it works fine over both ethernet and AirPort. I get no lockups and no blank windows. Of course, it feels just a little strange to me to be using a Finder interface for an FTP server, but I don't know why. It just does. I'll probably stick to using the commandline ftp tool, but this is still a nifty thing to remember about.

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FTP for Finder works fine
Authored by: balthisar on Sat, Aug 31 2002 at 11:00PM PDT
Uhg! I have to use command line FTP at work to get around the firewall! If I could use the Finder FTP in any circumstance I would. At home, though, it works okay out of the box to my web-host. Not much need to try other sites, so I don't know if I'm lucky or site-dependent.



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Risky without Write permission
Authored by: james_sorenson on Sun, Sep 1 2002 at 11:45AM PDT
I have no problems if I access an FTP server with read/write permissions. However, going to an anonymous server is quite risky. I guess the Finder locks up as it stubbornly tries to write a .DS_Store file or something. Oh well.

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Read-only FTP
Authored by: mm2270 on Mon, Sep 16 2002 at 12:54PM PDT
As others have stated here, when an FTP server is mounted in the Finder, for some odd reason, you only get read-only access, even when authenticating with username/password. At least that's what happenes to me. I get no lock-ups, although I believe that it is a real problem for many users. I hope this fix comes out soon. Accessing FTP servers through the Finder really is awesome. Once the fix is out, I can finally dump all my other FTP apps!

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Not here
Authored by: bluehz on Fri, Sep 20 2002 at 2:31PM PDT
No luck here - clean install OS X 10.2, upgrade 10.2.1

Lock up Finder...

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Has anyone gotten this to work yet?
Authored by: tcurtin on Mon, Jan 20 2003 at 8:37AM PST
I can't imagine why this doesn't work - it should just be a simple ftp command... There are plenty of ftp clients, its a well-understood protocol...

In any case, I'm wondering if anyone's found a workaround yet - I still can't get it to work using 10.2.3, and its keeping me from doing some fairly important work on my mac. (I got used to saving important excel and word files as web pages online - neat feature, which there's no way to duplicate on my mac?!?! Most annoying...)

Here's a fun error that shows up in a console window when trying to ftp. no_worky?! ;)

execstring: /System/Library/Filesystems/ftp.fs/csmount -m /Volumes/ftp.apple.com ftp://ftp.apple.com
no worky! domain:5, error550
2003-01-20 08:19:31.553 csmount[6596] CFLog (20): Authentication: Enter username and password
no worky! domain:5, error550


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Has anyone gotten this to work yet?
Authored by: integrator on Wed, Mar 5 2003 at 1:16AM PST
just tried it with 10.2.4,

it worked once, in read-only mode (after asking for login/pass), then locked up accessing another server. tried the first server again, and it locked up the second time.

not sure where to look for the problem, but seems like it /should/ be something simple..

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Avoid Finder FTP services in 10.2
Authored by: rob_94110 on Tue, Apr 1 2003 at 5:28PM PST
I was also getting lock ups that required a hard reboot until I turned on FTP passive mode. It seems to be working now. You can turn on PASV by using the Network panel in the System Preferences (go to the Proxies tab).

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