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FTP 550 Error

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cshack

Technical User
Mar 20, 2001
52
GB
Hello,
I'm hving trouble ftp'ing my pages, I get an error "cannot open romote folder 550, no such file or directory".

It seems as if it's just appeared overnight as I ftp'd yesterday and I haven't changed a thing locally.

Do you think this is a server problem, and not a local problem?

Manny Thanks in advance.
 
Manny

What program or method are you using to FTP? Are you making a connection and then encountering the error? Or are your erroring our while trying to connect? Does your website open through ypour browser?

First thing I would do is contact your hosting company and ask them if they are having any problems, since you were able to FTP yesterday. Also, if you are using a program such as WS-FTP, make sure that you didn't change the connection options by mistake. When in doubt, deny all terms and defnitions.
 
Make sure your directories are read and execute (chmod 755)
 
The connection error occours in dreamweaver when i try to connect to the host and yes, my site opens through my browser.

How do i male sure all my directories are read and exucute. chmod 755??

Thanks again.
 
I don't think you can do it through dreamweaver but if you have an ftp client (I.e. Cute ftp/ Ws-ftp) you rightclick on the folder and change the permissions.
 
Hi

I have had a similar sort of thing to this, and it was because the host directory folder that I was pointing to when I logged in began with a forward slash. Once I removed it everything worked a treat. It may have nothing to do with it, but nothing ventured nothing gained and all that.
Derren
[The only person in the world to like Word]
 
CHMOD should have nothing to do with FTPing to the site...
Do you have an FTP program apart from using DW? If not, tucows or cnet will have WS-FTP which is a free download... install it and see if you can connect that way. You will then be able to see what is going on, possibly. When in doubt, deny all terms and defnitions.
 
I don't know how much you know about linux/unix systems viol8ion. But if you don't have execute and read permissions to a folder/directory you can't access it. And I quote:

"Question/Problem: I keep receiving an error message: "550 permission denied". What does that mean?

Answer/Solution: The 550 error is a message from the server stating that the account you have currently logged in as does not have permission to perform the action you are attempting. You may be trying to upload to the wrong directory or trying to delete a file.

Here is an example of when someone would receive this message:

John logs into ftp.ipswitch.com and goes to the directory /Ipswitch/Product_Downloads
In this directory John sees a list of files for users to download. If John selects a file from his local system and tries to upload it to this directory he will receive the 550 permission denied message because he does not have rights to upload to this directory. John has read and list permissions only. In order to upload John needs write permission. He could contact the system administrator to ask for write permission on the server."


-------------------------------------------------
I don't know exactly how over a day he could loose permission to a folder. I could see if he didn't have read/execute permission to his home directory how he could get that error but I don't see how it could be changed without him changing the permissions.
 
I do web design solely on unix/linux boxes. I write perl and am VERY familiar with CHMOD and how it works.

According to your scenario, if John does not have permission to write/execute to his root directory, then John does not by default have rights to change CHMOD to his directories, and therefore your solution to CHMOD the directories/files will not work. My initial reply that John contact his webhost would be the solution.

CHMOD just does not change by itself overnight. The most likely cause (as long as nothing changed on his system) is something was done on the remote server that revoked his permissions to FTP. Maybe he reached the size limit of his account? When in doubt, deny all terms and defnitions.
 
True. He would not be able to chmod his root folder. But it could still be a CHMOD problem. I highly doubt that a company would revoke his permission to log in just because he had reached his storage limit.
 
And yes ... as was suggested contacting support at your hosting company would be the recommended route.
 
We could debate this for days, at least we agree on contacting his host! :)

CHMOD would not likely prevent him from uploading, after all, one must first upload a file, or create a directory before one can CHMOD that directory or file. Of course, I admit that I don't use DW's upload feature, so maybe there is something that I am missing.

I had an account on a linux server that had a size limit, and I forget exactly what error I got, but it was because I had exceeded my quota. I do remember there was a permission denied involved, and it was one of the common linux hosting programs that everyone and his brother is offering for $7/mo. I would be willing to bet monopoly money that the size limit is the cause. When in doubt, deny all terms and defnitions.
 
Interesting.

He didn't even know how to chmod so that is a moot issue. I wonder what their uumask is.

Anyway, you have a point about debating the issue. I have used the ftp client through dreamweaver site management a little and it is pretty nice. You have to make sure you don't try and specify a subdirectory to your hostsite that does not exist though (remote files/directory) I'm not sure this will cause errors or not but I would imagine so (can't test it right now, in linux). And once again ... call support ...

I didn't mean to disprove your knowledge at all either viol8ion I am just trying to spit out possibilities.
 
>trying to spit out possibilities

That's what makes these little communities work... ask 100 people a question, get 100 answers, one is bound to be correct!

One day I will have to set up the DW ftp client.. but I am afraid I will get lazy then :-0 I wish that more webhosts would allow telnet... right now the only telnet I have is to my main website account ( all others disallow it. Some are allowing SSH at an extra fee :-( Guess this is what we call progress, eh? But I digress... When in doubt, deny all terms and defnitions.
 
Thanks for all your comments,
I contacted the host "technical support" which weren't the best of help so I fiddled around with the settings..eeek!

my host directory folder was (and has been for a year) called /docs/ so I took that out and connected to the host server and success - I could see my files i've been uploading, but it wouldn't let me overwrite any files - permission denied.

It would let me delete files and pages form the host so i did that on one page and sure enough when i looked through my browser it was gone. i tried to upload the page agian and this time it let me, so i did and when i looked through my browser again it was there.

bottom line - looks as if i need to delete the whole site from the host and upload it again which should work as i did it on the one page alone.

thanks for all your help ppl.
 
cshack

Does your account have a control panel? Many times you will access it by typing in or The info would have been in the email that you recieved when you signed up. If so, then you will be able to see how close you are to your quota.

It does sound like you have reached quota if you cannot upload until you delete pages. Docs is your main folder? Normally it would be public_html or . on an NT server just plain /.

Anyway, my guess still is that you have met your quota for disk space.

Sounds like you have a good handle on it now. When in doubt, deny all terms and defnitions.
 
hello viol8tion,
Nope, no control panel available. It's only free webspace from ntlworld.
Funny(?) thing about this, it's letting me see the pages etc. and even delete them, now it's letting me upload any other page apart from the index.html. I have to delete it from the host and then upload it again - every time i want to overwrite it as i don't have permission!!! Surely if I don't have permission to overwrite a page, then why does it let me delete them...i know these are questions i should be asking ntl, but they have no answer - all they can do is say everything is ok at there end!!

Perhaps I'm being to optimistic over a bit of free webspace(?) form a company renouned for bad customer service.

I'm nowhwere near my quota either.

The epic continues!
 
That is definately strange, what you may want to try, and here I have to eat my words, because it may be a chmod problem. Use WS-FTP, access the site and right click on the index.html file. Now you will see an option called CHMOD. Set it to 755, which will be the first column all items (read, write, execute) checked, then the second and third column check the top and bottom (read, execute)options, not the middle. Actually you probably won't need the execute checked, but it won't hurt anything. Now see if you can overwrite the file on FTP.

If that don't fix it, then I am stumped. If the site is an NT server, you will get an error that CHMOD failed or is not supported. In that case... well I guess you get what you pay for :) When in doubt, deny all terms and defnitions.
 
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