One of the most common support questions we deal with here at Mover is helping users through troubleshooting their Backup Box FTP connections. For this reason, we’ve decided to write an in depth guide to troubleshooting your FTP problems by applying the same steps that we do in order to get you up and running.
The first thing you need to know about FTP servers is that they come in many shapes and sizes. For this reason there are always going to be minor differences between implementations and quirks that make configuring each of them unique. That being said, 99% of the issues we see here are quite common and fairly simple to fix.
Filling In The FTP Connector Form
Let’s assume that you’ve tried creating a new connector using Backup Box, here’s what the form should look like when entered correctly:
Display Name: Your connectors nickname, this can be anything to help distinguish it from other connectors
Type: The type of FTP server you are connecting to, in most cases this will be Plain FTP.
Server: The url, without “ftp://”, that points at the FTP server you would like to connect to. Generally this will be the domain of your website with a prefixed “ftp.” Example: “ftp.yourwebsite.com”
Port: The server port FTP connections run through. This is almost always port 21.
Username: The username you have created, or been provided with, in order to log into your FTP server.
Common FTP Errors and How To Fix Them
Backup Box also provides basic error reporting when an FTP connector fails to authenticate. If you look in the red text box above the credentials form, there should be a basic error report that you can search in Google. Below I’ve documented the two most common cases as well, and how you can generally fix them.
The FTP server took too long to respond. Please ensure that the service is running and is accessible to the outside world: This error is most likely caused by your FTP server blocking our IP address on incoming request as we are not able to receive any response from the FTP server. If you have a firewall please open both the FTP control port (usually 21) and the FTP data ports (configured on your server) and ensure that the BackupBox IP (107.23.5.209) is whitelisted. You can verify that this is indeed the problem if you are able to successfully log in using another FTP client(see below) that is not on the same local network as the FTP server.
Login failed: 530 User cannot log in: This error is generally caused by a lack of permissions on behalf of your user account on the FTP server. This means that while Backup Box can connect using your credentials, it cannot access your file folders because your FTP account was not given the proper permissions when it was created.
Using FileZilla FTP Client To View Your FTP Contents
An effective way to check that the FTP server you wish to access is indeed configured properly for both internet access and your FTP user account is to access it using a third party FTP client. One of the most popular choices is FileZilla, an FTP client that runs on most common Operating Systems. After downloading and installing the desktop client from the website linked above, accessing your FTP server is quite simple:
The host, username, password, and port fields are all entered using the exact same information that you would in order to authenticate an FTP connector using Backup Box. In the event that your login attempt fails, this is all documented in the large blank space directly below the credential input bar. From here you can simply Google the output produced in red text(error message) which will provide you with a quick answer to your FTP connection problems. If all goes well, you’ll see files populated in the right hand “Remote site” box that should look something like this (with different folders and files of course!):
