Skip to main content
FTP Server connectors provide connection credentials to access the full-featured FTP Server.

Key Capabilities

  • Full-featured embedded FTP server with FTPS (FTP over TLS/SSL) support
  • Multi-client architecture with individual user profiles and directory isolation
  • Configurable permissions for send and receive directories per trading partner
  • Welcome banners, file filtering, and temporary file handling for reliable operations
  • Support for both active and passive modes with configurable port ranges

Overview

The FTP Server is primarily configured on the Profiles page. Then, individual FTP Server connectors provide a unique client profile to authenticate to the FTP Server. The client profile consists of a username (which matches the FTP Server connector’s Connector Id), a password, a set of send and receive directories, and permissions to read and/or write files in these directories. FTP clients are not given permissions to the root of the FTP Server, which means that FTP clients should always cd into the send (to download) and receive (to upload) directories after connecting.

Video Resources

Watch this short video for an overview of how to configure an FTP Server. The video uses an SFTP Server in the example, but the principles are the same for FTP.

Profile Configuration

The FTP Server Profile must be configured before connections can be established with individual FTP Server connectors. Click Profiles on the navbar, then click the FTP Server tab.

Server Configuration

Server implementation settings.

Other Settings

Settings that do not fall into the previous category.

Logging

Miscellaneous

Connector Settings

Once you configure the FTP Server profile settings, create and configure an individual FTP Server connector for each trading partner on the Flows page.

Settings Tab

Configuration

User Configuration

Credentials for authenticating to the local FTP server.

Permissions

Settings related to the read and write permissions the configured client has for the Send and Receive folders.

Advanced Tab

Local Folders

Settings related to the folders where clients upload and download files.

Other Settings

Settings not included in the previous categories.

Message

Logging

Miscellaneous

Alerts Tab

SLAs Tab

Establishing a Connection

Each FTP Server connector represents a single trading partner’s connection parameters. The trading partner should connect to the FTP server using the server settings (such as port and TLS mode) from the Profile page and the user configuration settings in the dedicated FTP Server connector (User and Password). Each trading partner has separate Send and Receive directories that are subfolders of the root. The partner should download files from the Send folder and upload files to the Receive folder. The client is not permitted to upload or download files from the root.

Macros

Examples

Common Errors

Error: Could not bind server socket: Permission denied.

Cause This error can appear when you attempt to connect to an FTP server and the process hosting does not have sufficient privileges to establish a listener on the specified port.
In some cases (such as Linux environments and hosted instances running in an Amazon AMI), you cannot use ports below 1024.
Resolution Choose a different port, or change the identity of the process hosting to one with permissions to bind to the port. The Amazon AMI-hosted version of uses the Ubuntu operating system, so recommends that you use an Uncomplicated Firewall (UFW) to manage port permission issues. For example, setting up FTP Server to run on port 8021 in and using UFW to forward port 21 to 8021 at the OS level looks like this:
If your environment uses a different Linux operating system, recommends that you bind to a port above the restricted range (for example, 8021 for FTP traffic) and use iptables to route incoming requests on the desired port to the allowed port: iptables -t nat -I PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 21 -j REDIRECT --to-port 8021