This is not official, but for a lot of people, fileZilla is the standard for testing whether ftp credentials and an ftp server are working. If someone says "Here is a screenshot of me connected to ftp with these credentials," then nobody non-jerk can say "I cannot connect," because fileZilla is the test. I have seen ftp login info that did not work until I tried it with fileZilla but I have never seen ftp login that works on other software but not fileZilla.* When you are a sysadministrator, this is a big deal. Nothing is worse than someone not being able to connect when you need them to be able to connect. It calls your credibility into question. To protect yourself in these situations, whether you are the use trying to connect or the sysadmin, you can use fileZilla to prove the truth of the situation. If you can connect with fileZilla, it means "The problem you are having is that you are not entering login info correctly." You can rely on fileZilla. Without fileZilla, a sys admin cannot have complete assurance that their ftp setup is valid. Going the other way, if you can produce a screenshot that shows you have entered everything correctly in fileZilla, and you are not connecting, that means something is wrong with the server or the network between the client and the server, which is the responsibility of the sysadmin to resolve. This is a typical exchange between a sys admin and someone trying to connect: sys user to admin: "Hey, there is something wrong with your server, because I cannot connect to it!" admin replies: "Please send me a screenshot of the connection that is not working through fileZilla" sys user to admin: "Oh, it works now." The situation we have now that prompted me to write is there is a guy at one of my clients who says he is a computer wiz, (it says that in his signature), who says "all we need to do to make this certain thing work is change some unix file permissions and it will take only a few minutes." It sounds wonderful and would be wonderful if it were true. It is not true. When I explained part of the reason to him, he wrote back "Really? well all you have to do is what I said." I do have have credibility in this man's eyes. Explaining more to him about why what he wrote is not going to help us will only add more information to his mental databanks marked "wrong from Dan Allen." The situation is this guy and I are accusing one another of being wrong. One of the reasons I love working in software is situations like this can be decided by an ultimate, impartial and always-c0rrect judge: the computer. So, I setup an installation of our software and gave this guy the login info for the account that owns all the files and directories, asking if he could please login and show me which files and directories need the permissions he said we need. His reply: "I cannot connect to your server." THIS is where fileZilla is prosecutor, judge, and jury. I am showing this guy a screenshot of me being connected with those credentials via fileZilla. Either he shows me a screenshot of fileZilla not working or that is the end of this story, everyone who knows anything knows that the problem is his. I know he won't be able to show a screenshot of fileZilla not working, unless the ftp on the server is setup wrong. The ftp cannot be wrong because it works for me in fileZilla. GW Bush said he was the Decider, but no human is the decider of facts when it comes to FTP. fileZilla is the decider. Not everyone buys into fileZilla as the deciding factor, but there are plenty who do, because basically, fileZilla always gets ftp right and the same thing is not as easy to say about other ftp software. fileZilla is free, and widely used, so if you are in a situation where you cannot connect to ftp, there is no good excuse to not at least try connecting with fileZilla and it will solve your connection problem or prove that the problem is not at your end. I want to show this guy, and anyone else who might be following this situation that he is alone in being unable to connect to the server with the credentials I gave him. I thought it would be impressive if it just so happens that all of the members of our development team were able to post screenshots showing connections to the server with his credentials. That would take the wind out of his "there is something wrong with your server" statement.
