FTP Issues

[VladDracul]

Hello,

I'm new to the Mac World. I only bought my PB last week so I'm still trying to figure out a couple of things.

Just about the only huge problem I've found with Mac OS X so far is the following:

I connect to an FTP Server via the "Go/Connect To" option. Once the connection icon shows up on my desktop, I open a Finder window and start browsing the remote files. If at that point something goes wrong with the connection to the FTP Server I get the beach ball and it is impossible to get rid of it. If I try to wait it out, it never goes away. If I try to logout or shutdown, the system hangs indefinetly and my only option is to reboot by holding down the power button for 4 seconds.

I'm doing a lot of file sharing with a very unstable FTP server so I've had to reboot this way four times already. This to me seems a terrible problem and can't believe they haven't managed to fix it.

Has this happened to anyone else? Is it a known problem? Does it only happen with FTP connections?

Thanks for your help.

[daytona63]

Unfortunately, Apple didn't do the best job building FTP access into the Finder. If I were you, I'd either do your FTPing from the terminal, or use a program like Fetch, Fugu, or something like that. There are a ton of such programs, some free and some not, at versiontracker.com (http://www.versiontracker.com) . Supposedly, using FTP from the Finder in 10.3 will be a lot better.

[nodmonkey]

yep, Apple really made a mistake even allowing the cruddy FTP it has installed at the moment to be used before it works without hanging the whole system.

I have found that the best FREE FTP program available for Mac OS X is the rather ugly RBrowserLite (http://www.rbrowser.com/RBrowserLite/RBrowserLite.html). It does the job, though isn't tidy.

The BEST pay-for FTP program is Transmit 2 (http://www.panic.com/transmit). Very sweet.

Always search on Version Tracker (http://www.versiontracker.com) for your utilities!