Under other circumstances, this would be music to my ears - As Brian knows, I have been struggling for a week now with part loading of Client* files and flaky performance. I use Dreamweaver for handling other web matters and this has stopped working altogether. Having complained to 1and1 four times now, today I received the following “We would like to inform you that their is an ongoing issue about ftp connection and we don’t have any updates yet coming from our administrators. But rest assured they are trying to fix it as soon as possible. And we apologize for the inconvenience”
I have about 20 emails saying that, since 14th June.
This morning I can access the server again using fireFTP on port 22 and SFTP, but WD doesn’t seem to be able to use those settings yet even though it did seem to be able to use them for 24 hours on the 16th June.
If I switch WD back to FTP and Port 21 a few files get through intermittently.
I see this with fireFTP too, in that it will connect as normal but after about 5 seconds some kind of blocking closes in and the connection won’t work though it says it’s connected.
Curiously the same laptop is happily uploading a small webcam image file on FTP and port 21 every five minutes - presumably it just has time to connect and do this before the shut down kicks in.
I think the only solution here will be transfer hosting to an alternative company which is not determined to throttle and minimise if not abolish use of FTP
Searching online I see some suggestions about allowing port 22 in your advanced firewall settings and also possibly opening the port in your router.
I did tinker with this yesterday while port SFTP was completely blocked but it made no difference.
Since port 22 is now allowing SFTP from fireFTP I presume it can’t be blocked - I already undid my experimental changes.
it seems more and more web sites allow auto FTP use less and less
one alternative to FTP is to use something like meteotemplate, and its method option of using HTTP (you can set WD to do this) to invoke data saving to a mysql data base ?
For now I’ve just set my domain name to re-direct to my wunderground page as I’m too busy with hay and silage to muck about changing hosts, though have been in touch with a couple of alternative options who state that FTP is perfectly OK with them for the foreseeable future.
I did try this, but apart from not working it seemed to open more and more little windows until presumably it would crash!
A workaround of sorts:
This FTP/SFTP program can be quite easily set to monitor a chosen folder - e.g. webfiles - and sync any changes to a chosen folder on the server.
It’s a bit clunky as it syncs a lot of stuff in webfles that wasn’t being uploaded before.
It is possible to make a script which only uploads chosen files but doing that was beyond me for now, but might eventually work it out.
It also doesn’t change any file names so domain needs to be set to wx.htm not index.htm and any additional pages all your links will probably need altering.
Anyway I have it running to test, but not sure how long for.
It isn’t using a huge amount of resources but is slowing down my internet by uploading un-needed files.
I’ve turned WD’s own FTP off so that’s not churning away over and over again without uploading anything.
SFTP and FTPs (aka FTP w/SSL) are indeed completely different. I have been using FTPs directly from weather display successfully for some time, however I did have a short period of issues when my provider (MDD Hosting) migrated my shared instance to a new host. There is a configuration in the ftp component used with cPanel that breaks some FTPs clients. I had verified that that the linux-standard ‘lftp’ that supports FTPs also was broken so my provider was able to find the configuration item to change (at first they suggested it was an application issue)
SFTP used by other applications has been working well continuously, including my ftp/sftp bridge. Unfortunately not all applications provide a “secure” option via either SFTP or FTPs, so for those I use the free Bitvise SSH client with an ftp/sftp bridge configured. I did see a note from Ken that he still uses FTP with 1&1, but if they are forcing you to change or if you want to switch you can possibly try this option and stay with the native ftp in weather display.
Just got this working and much better than my clumsy option.
I discovered that since clientraw is updated very frequently it was only a matter of time before the file was open and that stopped any further transfers.
The FTP/SFTP bridge took bit more setting up but uploads to SFTP just like before on FTP 
Some info on setting this up on Weather-Display
-
Download and install free Bitvise FTP program in quote above ^
You need “Bitvise SSH client” not the server program. -
Set up a connection using SFTP.
You might need slightly different log-in details for SFTP compared to FTP - from the hosting company.
It will almost certainly be port 22
If you don’t check the box to store the password, you will need enter it manually every time the program is started.
However it will run more or less indefinitely alongside WD so far as I know.
- Make sure all is well and you can transfer files up and down.
You can select a fairly conventional double screen style window for this.
It can be minimised as no need to have this open once set up.~
- Now the more novel part - select services tab.
Enable Bridge, then listen interface will want to be as shown most likely (more on this later)
If you are uploading to a subfolder for your site, add it here.
You won’t see the activity list below until it is all working.
RH side panel is not required.
- The crucial part:
In WD FTP settings, change things to look like this.
You don’t actually need the password unless you turn that option on back in Bitvise.
(edit - see blue wording in image above about setting password)
This looks very odd but you are FTP-ing to ‘LocalHost’ which is what Bitvise listens for.
Note port here is still on 21 and SFTP is NOT checked.
Also don’t add in any specific directory leave that blank.
You could probably use alternative ports provided Bitvise is set to listen to the same one,
Go back to Bitvise and perhaps Log out and in again - hopefully activity will start.
It’s advisable to save this Bitvise profile so it can be easily restarted next time with all setting as you have now.
You could probably have this start each time as windows boots?
My Windows 7 laptop with WD runs for months on end without being touched unless I decide to manually reboot - so I don’t mind restarting Bitvice at the same time.
You can minimise Bitvise and more or less forget it.
Looks like 1and1 are not going to provide a solution to the problems of their making, and have advised me to use FileZilla to acces myweb sites. This has given me the usernames etc for the new system, so I will be having a go to use BitVise for my WDL. Will this upload the webcam image as well ??? - WD uses a separate FTP for this and this is very flaky.
My webcam page is uploaded by a separate program called Blue Iris, it doesn’t have any option to use SFTP at all - at least on my out of date version.
Surprisingly for now it is still managing to connect and fire up a 50kb image before they can close it again.
However I see no reason you couldn’t set it to local host too, and use the online file perhaps in a different way - it would have to be uploaded into the same folder as all the other WD stuff I think.
Yes - I am pleased to say, the webcam image is loading up as well, but at the moment, I cannot get the Bitvise software to continuosly upload the files - works well from the “Start” button, but does not continue - I must have missed something…
Somewhere in the setup was a box to overwrite files [without asking?] - which I checked because files with same name need overwrite ,while files with unique names it won’t ask - could it be that?
I have all the files marked for overwrite, but still only uploads when I push the start button, but not anymore…
There must be a button or something to turn on the automatic uploads - It only uploads once when I hit start…
Still struggling to regain ftp upload after 1and1 debacle - ie. changing ftp settings after 15 years stable running without so much as a note on their website or email !
Thanks to 4WD helpful posting re Bitvise I now have clientraw files uploading successfully.
However, I’m unable to get the main WD screen to upload.
My settings in ‘connections’ screen are as per 4WD screen shot and this seems to enable upload from 127.0.0.1 with Bitvise but not the WD screen grab.
Cant figure out how the clientraw can upload without the WD file when they are both using the same ftp route.
Any pointers please - apart from moving ftp host !
it might be that Bitvise only likes ASCII mode files (ie text files ) and not image files
As I mentioned earlier I have been using ftp-s via WD own ftp client since my provider (MDD Hosting) offers both ftp-s and sftp. However I do use the Bitvise ftp/sftp bridge for other programs with success.
I did get some time to do some testing. I tried using sftp via the WD own ftp client but based on the logs the connection would just time out. My provider uses a different port for ssh/sftp instead of the standard SSH port of 22. I tried specifying the alternate port as the ‘ftp’ port but that did not seem to work. I don’t know if the native ftp supports using an alternate port for sftp (Brian?) but I could not get that to work so I moved to the next step.
I changed to using standard ftp to my Bitvise ftp/sftp bridge and it was able to upload all files (text and images) with success. My configuration is slightly different than above:
- For the Bitvise ‘Services’ configuration, I have the SFTP start directory left empty
- For the WD ftp configuration (FTP & Connections → Connections tab) I list the full path to my upload directory without the leading slash. IE: “public_html/mysite/wd” instead of “/public_html/mysite/wd”
It is sometimes easier to test using the native windows ftp client first. IE: for the Bitvise bridge testing from a command prompt use ‘ftp localhost’, then manually try to CD to the path listed in the WD configuration, exactly as entered there. Get that working using different variations until it is correct and you don’t get any errors, then once you have a working path to use go back and put that back in the WD configuration. Then try to manually upload files - binary and text - to see if that works and if not note any errors, also using the windows ftp client.
I then tried to use an ‘external’ ftp program, but I am not sure if I had that configuration right. This might be the best option for future development, and for an sftp client the already-noted Bitvise as well as the well-known PuTTY both provide free-to-use sftp clients. However I could not find a configuration in WD to make this work with the Bitvise sftp and I could not find logs to help diagnose.
I don’t know if Brian would be able to bundle either Bitvise or PuTTY with WD due to licensing, but perhaps an option to use one/either of these with instructions as an external ftp client might be viable. I may keep trying to make this work and if so I 'll document the configuration here.
WD is very configurable (thanks Brian!) so there should be options to make this work with various providers.
does this version of WD’s ftp program work with your ftps server waterslide?
(just interested)
http://www.weather-display.com/downloadfiles/ftpupd.zip
(with WD set to use FTPS)
I tried that version of ftpupd.exe with ftp-s and yes to my provider it appeared to work OK.
However, I did see two other items that seemed to have a problem. Reverting to the original ftpupd.exe resolved these:
[ul]
[li]The ftp fetch of the NOAA forecast failed since the existing forecast already existed (locally). I didn’t capture the exact error though it stated that the file exists but overwrite flag was not set[/li]
[li]Working with weatherbug seems to have a problem. I had thought this was a separate process but this is where the new version of ftpupd.exe appeared to hang in the log[/li][/ul]
With the new ftpupd.exe:
FTPUPD.EXE started at 17:46 07/03/16
****agenda items to do...****
dowundergroundweddal
doweatherbug
FTPUPD.EXE started at 17:50 07/03/16
****agenda items to do...****
dohamweather
doftpdown
doupload
doupload
dogrouped2
*******Files to upload********
Each time this would happen, there would be another ftpupd.exe left running that had to be killed via the task manager. Note the missing ‘finished’ message.
With the working ftpupd.exe there is a “finished” message and no ftpupd.exe left running:
FTPUPD.EXE started at 17:26 07/03/16
****agenda items to do...****
dowundergroundweddal
doweatherbug
*******list of files uploaded********
FTPUPD.EXE finished at 5:26:12 PM 7/3/2016
Time taken = 0.02 minutes
Total bytes uploaded = 0 K
Total bytes uploaded for the day = 83.72 Mb
Total bytes uploaded for the month = 26.74 Mb
FTPUPD.EXE started at 17:30 07/03/16
I’m not sure if you were aware of these yet. To confirm, the ftp-s upload to my provider did work with the ftpupd.exe that you attached.
good that it does work…except for the ftpdownload of the forecast file from the noaa server by the looks (I will test that)
and weatherbug ?