FTP error to web server

[bgra...@umw.edu]

I am running:  weewx 5.3.1 on a Raspberry Pi 5 with Raspbian linux (Debian 13.x: Trixie), and Python version: 3.13.5.

All was good but an OS update last night must have caused an FTP problem, maybe with a new version of python (?). Error from log file is attached.

Davis VP2+ is running well but stopped FTPing to my website.

Can anyone help with what is happening here?  Thanks in advance. I can run with debug if needed.

Bob

grattans.org/wx

[Karen K]

The error message states "timeout". It happens during connection initiation. So some possible reasons come into mind:

• Internet access broken (Can you connect to servers in the Internet?)
• DNS resolving broken (You can connect to servers by IP but not by name.)
• passive/active FTP mode issues

First I would try to check the Internet connection. On the console you could enter "ping www.ibm.com". You should get answers from them. Then you can try the ftp command. If it is not there, you can install it. Try then "ftp your.webserver.com". Does that work? If not, it is not a WeeWX but a system problem.

[Vince Skahan]

My suggestion (since it's already broken) is to just stop using FTP.  Switch to RSYNC.  It is 'much' more stable and 'very much' faster and doesn't have these kinds of mysterious hiccups.

I can ping grattans.org from here in the US but trying to ftp by name 'or' address to it just hangs.   My guess is you have a firewall blocking incoming ftp traffic, but you haven't provided any information about your system nor network configuration.

It's definitely your os or networking setup, not weewx.

[bgra...@umw.edu]

Thanks for the reply, Karen. My Inet connection is ok and I can reach my site grattans.org using filezilla from other computers on my local network. From the weewx server I can ping grattans.org and I can use dig grattans.org to get the IP address. However on the weewx server when I enter FTP myu...@grattans.org it only hangs. Filezilla on the weewx server says it can't connect even though it connects from the other computers on the LAN. I'm not a programmer and can"t figure what is happening here.  Weewx is working correctly except for FTP. Thanks

Bob

[bgra...@umw.edu]

Thanks, Vince, I have wanted to switch to rsync but have been hesitant for lack of experience. Not being much of a programmer, I didn't follow how to set it up so I stuck with FTP which was working at the time and has been for several years. Is there a simple "how to" guide I could follow? I'm confused by setting up keys to authorize the transfer.  Thanks.

Bob

[bgra...@umw.edu]

This is my FTP section which has been working:

 [[FTP]]
        # FTP'ing the results to a webserver is treated as just another report,
        # albeit one with an unusual report generator!
        skin = Ftp

        # If you wish to use FTP, set "enable" to "true", then fill out the
        # next four lines.
        # Use quotes around the password to guard against parsing errors.
        enable = true    ##false
        user = mk0a7xxxxx
        password = xxxxx
        server = grattans.org    # The ftp server name, e.g, www.myserver.org
        path = /public_html/WeeWX    # The destination directory, e.g., /weather

        # Set to True for an FTP over TLS (FTPS) connection. Not all servers
        # support this.
        secure_ftp = False

        # To upload files from something other than what HTML_ROOT is set
        # to above, specify a different HTML_ROOT here.
        HTML_ROOT = public_html

        # Most FTP servers use port 21.
        port = 21

        # Set to 1 to use passive mode, zero for active mode
        passive = 1

[jterr...@gmail.com]

I suspect that the main problem may be here : "However on the weewx server when I enter FTP myu...@grattans.org it only hangs. Filezilla on the weewx server says it can't connect even though it connects from the other computers on the LAN."

Are you able to open any web site from the weewx server's browser ?  If not, may be you have to look at the network settings of the weewx server.

[Vince Skahan]

You're going to have to eventually describe your setup enough for folks to help.  What is 'grattans.org' ?  Are you hosted somewhere on Internet ?  Where/by-whom ?  Did your provider start blocking ftp ?

Something ''there' is amiss.  It's your ftp server side setup definitely.

[bgra...@umw.edu]

grattans.org is my web site hosted by godaddy. My weewx RPI5 uploaded the public_html files every 15 minutes. I'm going to call godaddy to see if they are blocking something. This has been working fine for over ten years.

I'll get back once I talk with them.  Thanks.

[Jimi Lawson]

Your website https://www.grattans.org/ appears to be unreachable by browser, (Chrome, Firefox & Opera)

Regards

Jimi

[bgra...@umw.edu]

Well, so much for godaddy. They said their server checked out but they don't help with Linux problems. Not sure where to go. grattans.org should work with http:// no "https"

I ran the following which might help:

pi@rpi5trixie:~ $ sudo ufw status
Status: active

To                         Action      From
--                         ------      ----
22/tcp                     ALLOW       Anywhere
OpenSSH                    ALLOW       Anywhere
21                         ALLOW       Anywhere
21/tcp                     ALLOW       Anywhere
22/tcp (v6)                ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)
OpenSSH (v6)               ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)
21 (v6)                    ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)
21/tcp (v6)                ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)

pi@rpi5trixie:~ $ nmap localhost -p 21
Starting Nmap 7.95 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2026-05-12 18:22 EDT
Nmap scan report for localhost (127.0.0.1)
Host is up (0.00012s latency).
Other addresses for localhost (not scanned): ::1

PORT   STATE  SERVICE
21/tcp closed ftp

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.04 seconds

[Vince Skahan]

Try opening port 20 as a final test.

[bgra...@umw.edu]

Didn't seem to help

pi@rpi5trixie:~ $ sudo ufw status
Status: active

To                         Action      From
--                         ------      ----
22/tcp                     ALLOW       Anywhere
OpenSSH                    ALLOW       Anywhere
21                         ALLOW       Anywhere
21/tcp                     ALLOW       Anywhere

20/tcp                     ALLOW       Anywhere

22/tcp (v6)                ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)
OpenSSH (v6)               ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)
21 (v6)                    ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)
21/tcp (v6)                ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)

20/tcp (v6)                ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)

[Vince Skahan]

20 is 'not' open from here, but it's been so many years since I had to use ftp that I'm uncertain if it's needed or not.

I see 22 (ssh) is open, so I'd still recommend trying to use the RSYNC uploader. Hey - looks like there's a wiki article on how to do that.  That wiki has a lot of stuff if you try to look for howtos there.

https://github.com/weewx/weewx/wiki/rsync-setup

(big fan of the guy who wrote that page - big fan!)

[John Smith]

To                         Action      From
--                         ------      ----
22/tcp                     ALLOW       Anywhere
OpenSSH                    ALLOW       Anywhere
21                         ALLOW       Anywhere
21/tcp                     ALLOW       Anywhere
20/tcp                     ALLOW       Anywhere
22/tcp (v6)                ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)
OpenSSH (v6)               ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)
21 (v6)                    ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)
21/tcp (v6)                ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)
20/tcp (v6)                ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)

I think you messed up your firewall, I can't connect to any ports but it is replying to ICMP

# telnet grattans.org 21

Trying 107.180.54.252...
^C
# telnet grattans.org 80
Trying 107.180.54.252...
^C
# telnet grattans.org 443
Trying 107.180.54.252...
^C
# telnet grattans.org 443
Trying 107.180.54.252...
^C
# telnet grattans.org 22
Trying 107.180.54.252...
^C

 6. ce-2-0-0.a00.sydnau05.au.bb.gin.ntt.net                                                                                                                                                        0.0%    13    0.4   0.7   0.3   2.8   0.7
 7. ae-1.r22.sydnau05.au.bb.gin.ntt.net                                                                                                                                                            0.0%    13    0.4   0.5   0.4   0.8   0.1
 8. ae-11.r26.lsanca07.us.bb.gin.ntt.net                                                                                                                                                           0.0%    13  312.8 312.8 312.7 313.0   0.1
 9. ae-0.r27.lsanca07.us.bb.gin.ntt.net                                                                                                                                                            0.0%    13  143.3 143.3 143.2 143.6   0.1
10. ae-3.r27.asbnva02.us.bb.gin.ntt.net                                                                                                                                                            0.0%    13  195.4 195.3 195.2 195.5   0.1
11. ae-1.a04.asbnva02.us.bb.gin.ntt.net                                                                                                                                                            0.0%    13  195.1 197.0 195.1 207.2   4.0
12. ae-1.godaddy.asbnva02.us.bb.gin.ntt.net                                                                                                                                                        0.0%    13  199.9 203.2 199.9 226.1   7.4
13. (waiting for reply)
14. ae20.phx3-ibrmb1205-02.bb.gdinf.net                                                                                                                                                            0.0%    13  221.6 221.8 221.6 222.6   0.3
15. ae2.phx3-pemc0215-01.bb.gdinf.net                                                                                                                                                              0.0%    13  221.8 223.3 221.8 230.9   3.3
16. (waiting for reply)
17. (waiting for reply)
18. (waiting for reply)
19. (waiting for reply)
20. (waiting for reply)
21. (waiting for reply)
22. (waiting for reply)
23. (waiting for reply)
24. (waiting for reply)
25. 252.54.180.107.host.secureserver.net                                                                                                                                                           0.0%    12  222.2 222.3 222.1 222.5   0.1

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[John Smith]

Also the v6 rules are useless unless you have an IPv6 IP and you add an AAAA record for it in DNS

[John Smith]

20 is 'not' open from here

It's been a few decades since I got rid of FTP but from memory it's only listened to once port 21 has been connected to and/or authenticated and there is a request to use it.

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[Vince Skahan]

Bob it looks to me from here (US PNW) that your site 'is' responding to ssh just fine.  I of course don't have an account there so I can't log in, but it looks like incoming ssh is ok FWIW.

[bgra...@umw.edu]

It's time to have a beer (Stone IPA highly recommended).

None of my Linux machines seem to want to ssh or ftp to each other (LAN) or outside (WAN) to grattans.org. Could it be some setting in the ASUS router? I haven't changed anything I'm aware of and it was working before. 

I will definitely try RSYNC tomorrow but I will need to be able to ssh to grattans.org to install a key. I'll sleep on it for now.

Thanks everyone for the help so far. If you have any suggestions I'll try tomorrow. Much appreciated.

Cheers,

Bob

[Jimi Lawson]

http is unreachable as well, from the UK I get

"The web page at http://grattans.org/ might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address."

[bgra...@umw.edu]

Ok, here is where I am so far today.

I have checked with godaddy and they say everything is normal with my web site. I did this scan:

grattans.org (107.180.54.252)
- Port #22 (ssh):  listening
- Port #21 (ftp):  listening
- Port #25 (smtp):  listening
- Port #80 (http):  listening
- Port #110 (pop3):  listening
- Port #143 (imap):  listening
- Port #443 (https):  listening
- Port #993 (imaps):  listening
- Port #995 (pop3s):  listening
- Port #3306 (mysql):  listening

I did a port scan of my home address as I appear on the Inet:

100.70.65.73 (my home Inet address)
- Port #20 (ftp-data):  listening
- Port #22 (ssh):  listening
- Port #21 (ftp):  listening
- Port #443 (https):  listening

On my LAN (192.168.1.x) I am able to ssh and ftp to my  3 win11 and 3 Linux machines, back and forth.

I am able to run Filezilla on the LAN on win11 and Linux machines, back and forth.

I am able to run Filezilla from win11 to grattans.org but NOT from the Linux machines.

I can ssh to grattans.org from win11 but not from any of the Linux machines.

For some reason unknown to me, grattans.org doesn't like ssh or ftp from Linux while it works from win11. 

Following Vince's good guide to RSYNC, I created the keys on my weewx server. Unable to ssh to grattans.org from that machine,

I cut and pasted the following into grattans.org .ssh via win11 Filezilla. Not sure if this will work and haven't tried it yet.

pi@rpi5trixie:~ $ ll .ssh
total 16
-rw------- 1 pi pi 2602 May 12 14:04 id_rsa
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi  567 May 12 14:04 id_rsa.pub
-rw------- 1 pi pi 1120 May 12 17:17 known_hosts
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi  142 Mar  7 16:57 known_hosts.old

Hopefully this will make sense to someone as I am presently lost...

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Cheers,

Bob

[Vince Skahan]

Your network and/or firewall(s) are messed ip but I can't explain why or how to fix it.

• ftp and ssh from ubuntu on Internet both work.
• ssh from a mac mini on my LAN works.  Can't test ftp from the mac.
• ssh from anything raspios pi or ubuntu x86_64on my LAN fails and hangs

More data in case others have ideas.  I'm out of ideas on this one......

ftp from Internet ubuntu - note the mention of TLS here......

ubuntu@ip-172-26-0-17:~$ ftp www.grattans.org
Connected to grattans.org.
220---------- Welcome to Pure-FTPd [privsep] [TLS] ----------
220-You are user number 1 of 50 allowed.
220-Local time is now 14:26. Server port: 21.
220-This is a private system - No anonymous login
220-IPv6 connections are also welcome on this server.
220 You will be disconnected after 15 minutes of inactivity.
Name (www.grattans.org:ubuntu): ^C

I get the same nmap scans from mac (my LAN) and ubuntu (LAN 'or' Internet) systems - note 20 (ftp-data) and 990 (ftps - ftp over ssl) are closed but I don't know if it matters:

[vince@mini ~]$ nmap -v grattans.org
Starting Nmap 7.94 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2026-05-13 13:55 PDT
Initiating Ping Scan at 13:55
Scanning grattans.org (107.180.54.252) [2 ports]
Completed Ping Scan at 13:55, 0.08s elapsed (1 total hosts)
Initiating Parallel DNS resolution of 1 host. at 13:55
Completed Parallel DNS resolution of 1 host. at 13:55, 0.03s elapsed
Initiating Connect Scan at 13:55
Scanning grattans.org (107.180.54.252) [1000 ports]
Discovered open port 21/tcp on 107.180.54.252
Discovered open port 993/tcp on 107.180.54.252
Discovered open port 995/tcp on 107.180.54.252
Discovered open port 443/tcp on 107.180.54.252
Discovered open port 143/tcp on 107.180.54.252
Discovered open port 22/tcp on 107.180.54.252
Discovered open port 587/tcp on 107.180.54.252
Discovered open port 80/tcp on 107.180.54.252
Discovered open port 3306/tcp on 107.180.54.252
Discovered open port 110/tcp on 107.180.54.252
Discovered open port 465/tcp on 107.180.54.252
Completed Connect Scan at 13:56, 43.60s elapsed (1000 total ports)
Nmap scan report for grattans.org (107.180.54.252)
Host is up (0.086s latency).
rDNS record for 107.180.54.252: 252.54.180.107.host.secureserver.net
Not shown: 977 filtered tcp ports (no-response)
PORT      STATE  SERVICE
20/tcp    closed ftp-data           <=======
21/tcp    open   ftp
22/tcp    open   ssh
80/tcp    open   http
110/tcp   open   pop3
143/tcp   open   imap
443/tcp   open   https
465/tcp   open   smtps
587/tcp   open   submission
990/tcp   closed ftps                 <========
993/tcp   open   imaps
995/tcp   open   pop3s
3306/tcp  open   mysql
50000/tcp closed ibm-db2
50001/tcp closed unknown
50002/tcp closed iiimsf
50003/tcp closed unknown
50006/tcp closed unknown
50300/tcp closed unknown
50389/tcp closed unknown
50500/tcp closed unknown
50636/tcp closed unknown
50800/tcp closed unknown

Read data files from: /opt/homebrew/bin/../share/nmap
Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 43.80 seconds

[Cameron D]

Being able to ssh from a local windows pc but not the pi sounds like a firewall problem.

What does 

   sudo traceroute -T -q 1 -p 22 grattans.org
tell you?

If it shows only one or two lines then your local system is blocking you.

If it shows a reply from your remote host, that means the ssh server is listening, so then try

 ssh -vv  grattans.org

You should see a pile of info about key exchanges

By the way,  to access remote ssh servers from home you do not need any ports open on your router - that is only to permit remote access into your home. If you don't need them then they should be closed.

[bgra...@umw.edu]

Thanks, Cameron D, for the reply. I have attached two files with the results of the commands you suggested. Does this help explain what is going on?

On the positive side, the damn thing started working correctly and FTP seems to be working correctly. Since I was fiddling around with ports and keys I'm not sure what caused things to start properly.

At the end of ssh -vv, it is asking for a password but I'm not sure which. There is no user pi on grattans.org.

Now that FTP is working again, I'm going to try Vince's suggestion on switching to RSYNC.

Much appreciated for everyone's help on this!

Cheers,

Bob

[Cameron D]

that shows it is now working as expected. So you are no closer to understanding what went wrong before.

For ssh from the pi you would need to specify the user name at the far end before giving the password (often the same as ftp uses). This would be a command line option, otherwise it defaults to your local username, which is rarely correct.

[Vince Skahan]

On Thursday, May 14, 2026 at 7:01:44 AM UTC-7 bgra...@umw.edu wrote:

On the positive side, the damn thing started working correctly and FTP seems to be working correctly. Since I was fiddling around with ports and keys I'm not sure what caused things to start properly.

At the end of ssh -vv, it is asking for a password but I'm not sure which. There is no user pi on grattans.org.

I can ftp and ssh to your server from my LAN now so whatever network thing was blocking you is thankfully gone.

For your last statement, it is not really complicated.

• you were logged into your local system as user 'pi'
• you ran the command "ssh grattans.org"
• so the ssh program tried to log you into the same ('pi') user on the remote system
  • it did the same thing as if you had run "ssh p...@grattans.org"
  • if you wanted to log into a different user, you would need to run "ssh differ...@gratans.org"

That simple.

Glad it's working.  No idea why but sometimes you just have to take the 90% win and walk away.