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I am having an issue with FileZilla. I try to establish an FTP connection with my server but end up stuck at the same initial message after trying quite a few rounds. I am able to use the same host, username, password and port to login using Chrome browser but not for FileZilla. Any idea?

    Status: Connection established, waiting for welcome message...
    Response:   220---------- Welcome to Pure-FTPd [privsep] [TLS] ----------
    Response:   220-You are user number 1 of 50 allowed.
    Response:   220-Local time is now 16:13. Server port: 21.
    Response:   220-This is a private system - No anonymous login
    Response:   220-IPv6 connections are also welcome on this server.
    Response:   220 You will be disconnected after 15 minutes of inactivity.
    Command:    AUTH TLS
    Response:   234 AUTH TLS OK.
    Status: Initializing TLS...

So far I tried download and install the older version but different error appears (failed to retrieve directory listing) reference to https://trac.filezilla-project.org/ticket/9995

MariusMatutiae
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William Kheng
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6 Answers6

16

Had this problem also, just go to file ->site manager. On the encryption drop down change to "use only Plain FTP (insecure). And that's it!

joe mwirigi
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    This is a horrible suggestion. The author's FTP server clearly supports encrypted connection, so they should be used, not using encrpted conenctions when they are supported is a bad idea – Ramhound Mar 21 '16 at 13:13
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    This is actually a known issue on certain shared hosting (like HostGator). It will act as if TLS is working (because they sort of have it setup, IIRC), but it doesn't work properly, hence Filezilla can't use it, but fails without a truly helpful prompt. Therefore, you have to follow this advice to use Filezilla, or connect via HostGator's web interface. – SRDC Nov 19 '16 at 03:26
  • For security, we should not turn off TLS encryption because of "TLS does not work". My case was that ISP did allow TLS on FTP. – John Nov 08 '21 at 00:42
10

I faced the same issue many times, and when the hosting provider and filezilla forums couldn't help, i myself tried digging it deeper to figure out the exact problem. Putting it altogether for you all..

There are mainly two scenarios under which you can face this issue..

First: Server you are trying to access doesn't support connection over TLS.
Second: You ISP doesn't allow to initialize TLS on FTP.

But since now most of the standard hosting providers do support FTP over TLS, so the issue is mainly due to ISP, Especially mobile operators disallow this sought of connection, so people using mobile hotspots are more likely to face this problem. Like in India half of the mobile operators doesn't allow FTP over TLS. Just switch the data SIM or the ISP and try again.

Tariq
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    Yes @McDonald's i am serious, 90% of filezilla TLS blocked issues reported by my clients got resolved by switching the ISP. In India most of the people prefer using Mobile hotspots as their internet source, as high speed 4G data plans are very cheap here. Its because of such plans India has emerged as the most data consuming country of world 2017.. check stats http://www.internetworldstats.com/top20.htm – Tariq Aug 12 '17 at 02:16
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    On the off chance that this is happening to you in the country of Taiwan, I can confirm that many ISPs here don't allow TLS on FTP. – Caleb Jay Mar 31 '21 at 13:05
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    Wow... just wow. Why would ISPs be so shady as to block a secure connection when mobile engineers need that most? Someone seriously needs to fire their sys admins like BOTG says... https://forum.filezilla-project.org/viewtopic.php?t=50415 – Rick Mac Gillis Jul 21 '21 at 17:42
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The most likely reason is that the server you're connecting to does not support FTP over TLS. Try connecting with another protocol, or with plain FTP instead and see what happens.

There is a LENGTHY bug report on the Filezilla bug tracker website from people re-opening a bug on this issue, because the feedback FileZilla gives is less than helpful in this situation.

Dale C. Anderson
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    This is probably different. With "234 AUTH TLS OK." the server clearly indicates that it supports TLS but the TLS handshake hangs. – Steffen Ullrich Nov 02 '15 at 10:38
  • Dang, I missed that part. My bad. The other thing you can check is whether you have the hostname specified correctly. If the SSL certificate name is 'foo.example.com', but you're trying to connect to 'bar.example.com', this can also cause the connection not to work - although I don't remember whether the connection fails outright, or if it hangs. But either way, connecting via IP address gets around that issue. – Dale C. Anderson Nov 02 '15 at 10:43
  • If the hostname is wrong than certificate validation should fail, that is no hang. If in this case the connection with IP only succeeds than I would not trust this FTP client because this usually means that no proper certificate validation is done at all. – Steffen Ullrich Nov 02 '15 at 11:06
  • Have you tried connecting with any other FTP clients? Have you tried connecting without encryption? – Dale C. Anderson Nov 02 '15 at 17:10
  • perfect!!! +1 :) – SagarPPanchal Dec 27 '16 at 14:41
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I had the same issue. I was using mobile hotspot to connect my laptop to the Jio 4G provided internet. I have openSUSE 42.2 installed on my laptop.

I disconnected, then checked "Require IPv4 addressing for this connection to complete" checkbox in the network adapter settings, and reconnected; and then tried again connecting with FileZilla and it worked.

I don't know if the networking system of laptop was connecting only using IPv6 and the server or FileZilla was expecting IPv4 address of my laptop OR there was some other issue!

Nikunj Bhatt
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I experienced this where the server's certificate was not trusted and so the TLS initialisation process stalled waiting for confirmation.

The confirmation prompt had only been missed because it was displayed in a separate pop up box that appeared out of view due to working on a desktop system that was not showing the full display on a single screen.

Resolved by one of:

  • fixing the certificate trust issue (e.g. installing missing intermediate certificates, etc.);
  • agreeing to the confirmation prompt (after finding it on screen!) to trust the server certificate and carry on connecting (i.e. accepting the security risk - e.g. in controlled test environments with self signed certificates, etc.)
jmmk
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-1

Had this problem when the server I used changed user, password and host. Finally found out for me after program stopped at TLS.

  • Uninstall FileZilla
  • reboot
  • Delete these directories:
    C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Roaming\FileZilla
    C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Local\FileZilla
  • reinstall FileZilla

Enter your details in site manager using your old correct settings. I'm using passive mode.

fixer1234
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Malboo
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