Transferring data to/from stallo using ftp.

The basics

You need a ftp client that supports encrypted authentication.

Please note that it is only the authentication that is encrypted, the data you copy will flow unencrypted over the network so do not copy any sensitive information using ftp.

Also note that ftp-access is only available from the university networks in Norway.

Here is a list of ftp clients that is reported to work with encrypted authentication:

CLI: Command Line Interface

Clients that most probably will not work: the std. ftp client on your system, that is, the one you get when you use the command ftp, ncftp also seems to have problems.

How to connect

The hostname of the ftp server is stallo-wgw.uit.no (this will change to stallo-ftp.uit.no soon).

Example using lftp on linux:

> lftp userA@stallo-wgw.uit.no
lftp userA@stallo-wgw.uit.no:~> ls
    ........ file listing .........
lftp userA@stallo-wgw.uit.no:~> get a-file-on-the-system
84291584 bytes transferred in 3 seconds (28.98M/s)

Problems

We seem to have some problems with the openssl library that takes care of the encryption, newer versions seems to work better but we cannot change the library without recompiling a lot of other stuff so we have to live with it until we upgrade stallo this fall.

The problem gives the following error message when transferring a file using lftp:

lftp userA@stallo-wgw.uit.no:~> get filename
get: Fatal error: SSL_read: wrong version number
lftp userA@stallo-wgw.uit.no:~> get filename
84291584 bytes transferred in 3 seconds (29.00M/s)

As one sees, just retrying fixes the problem(??).