Interarchy
Complex Transfers Simplified - Only With A Mac
Interarchy
Complex Transfers Simplified - Only With A Mac
If this happens right at the start, before attempting to login, it means you cannot connect to the FTP, SFTP or HTTP server. This could be because of network problems on your Mac, on the server, or between you and the server, or because of firewall issues. Try using Trace Route to see if you can connect to the server.
If, with FTP, it happens a little later, after login, but before transferring a listing or file, then it is usually a firewall issue, and can often be resolved by toggling the “Use passive mode” preference in the Transfers panel of the Preferences window, or possibly by disabling FTP/SSL-TLS in the “FTP uses SSL” preference in the SSL-TLS panel of the Preferences window.
To see whether it logged in or not, look in the Transcript window (choose Transcript from the Window menu) and see if the USER and PASS lines show up - if so, and if they succeed, then you have logged in.
If you cannot connect at all, see the I am getting connection refused errors, what’s wrong? section.
If you can connect, but cannot login at all, examine the Transcript window (choose Transcript from the Window menu) and see what it says, usually there is a clue for the reason there. If you cannot figure it out, please send us a complete transcript of the attempt (the best thing is to quit Interarchy, then launch it so everything (especially the transcript) is clean, then attempt to log in, then send us the entire transcript (open the Transcript window, choose Select All from the Edit menu, then copy and paste the entire transcript into an email and send it to support@interarchy.com.
If you are trying to connect with FTP/SSH or with SFTP, and only SSH FXP INIT shows in the Transcript window, especially if you get a -39 Logical End of File error, it means the SSH authentication has failed. This can happen if you have invalid or outdated information in your ~/.ssh/known hosts file.
The most likely explanation is that a firewall is blocking the data connection.
There are two things you can try. Toggling passive mode or Disabling SSL-TLS.
The “Use passive mode” preference in the Transfers panel of the Preferences window setting controls whether Interarchy’s data connections connects to the server (Passive Mode) or the server connects to Interarchy (Port Mode). Generally, Passive Mode is preferred, but toggling this preference may get you through some firewall situations.
By default Interarchy (as of version 8) will attempt to encrypt standard FTP connections using SSL-TLS. This added security measure prevents your password from being sent as clear text over the Internet, which is how standard FTP traditionally operates. Unfortunately, it also means that ‘smart’ firewalls cannot watch the FTP control connection and poke a hole in the firewall for the data connection. In some situations, Interarchy may connect successfully to the server, but any request will ultimately time out. Setting the “FTP uses SSL” preference in the SSL-TLS panel of the Preferences window to “Never” will disable SSL-TLS and may allow Interarchy to get though the firewall, but it will also mean that your password is sent in clear text.
The way FTP works, the data is transferred on a separate connection and the control connection sites idle for the entire duration of the transfer, until at the very end it sends the “200 completed” message. It appears that in some network situations, the route between the server and client is forgotten before the connection finishes.
In Interarchy versions after 6.2, we turn on “keep alive”, however there is no way to configure the keep alive timeout on a per stream basis, and it defaults to 2 hours which is far too long to resolve this problem. There is no good solution from inside Interarchy unfortunately.
However, you can configure the global keep alive timeout which would hopefully then resolve your problem. On your system, as root, you need to enter:
sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.keepidle=4800
in the terminal (which sets the keep alive to 4 minutes (ie, after four minutes of inactivity, an empty packet will be sent by the system down the TCP control connection).
If this resolves your problem, consider installing the KeepIdle startup item included with Interarchy (see KeepIdle Startup Item command in the Help menu).
There are three main culprits: The preferences are corrupt; the Interarchy Support bundle is corrupt or cannot be made; or least likely, the application is corrupt.
In the first case, trash the com.stairways.Interarchy.plist file (in the ~/Library/Preferences folder), or the Settings folder of the Interarchy prefs folder, or more brutally the whole Interarchy prefs folder. You will need to reenter your serial number and reset any preferences. If this resolves your problem, consider emailing us a copy of the offending file so we can try to see what went wrong and ensure it does not happen in the future.
In the second case (which is the most common), try trashing the ~/Library/Application Support/Interarchy folder (and if one is not there, make sure the Application Support folder is writable).
In the last case, downloading a replacement application is the best solution, visit http://download.interarchy.com/.
In all the years Kagi has been sending our serial numbers, we do not know of any case where they have given out an invalid serial number. Typically the problem is either you are launching an old version of Interarchy, or you are not entering your username (email address) and serial number exactly as specified in the license information you received.
You can look up your license details at http://enquiry.stairways.com/.
See also the How do I register Interarchy? section.
Your home directory is on a volume that does not support privileged helper tools. Most likely you have FileVault turned on.
You could try using the Finder's Get Info window to uncheck the “Ignore ownership” checkbox on the disk containing your home directory. However this will not work with FileVault.
You could also try moving the Interarchy 8 Support.bundle from the ~/Library/Application Support/Interarchy folder to the /Library/Application Support/Interarchy folder. This will work with FileVault.
When you move the Interarchy 8 Support.bundle you may get a warning that some files could not be copied. This is ok. Once you have moved the Interarchy 8 Support.bundle make sure there is no copy in the ~/Library/Application Support/Interarchy folder, if there is Interarchy will use this rather than the copy in the /Library/Application Support/Interarchy folder and traffic watching will still fail.
Typically, Interarchy keeps your password in the Keychain, and so once it is unlocked and you have entered your password once, you should never have to enter it again.
There are a number of different reasons why Interarchy might prompt you each time:
Interarchy has no practical limit on the number of files it will display in a directory listing or the number of files that will be mirrored. Unfortunately, the Pure FTPd server ships with a default configuration restricting directory listings (recursive or not) to 2000 items. Worse, it silently truncates the listing without giving an error (the english text response to the request indicates the truncation, but the response code indicates success).
For listings, this means you will only see the first 2000 files, and for mirroring, it will appear as if the server only holds the first 2000 files - the latter could be disastrous for a two way mirror since it will appear to Interarchy as if the files have been deleted from the server.
The limit can be relaxed by the server admin by adding the config setting --limitrecursion=15000:20 which limits the listing to 15000 items and 20 levels.
I have reported this dangerous issue to the Pure FTPd folks, but have received no response. Future versions of Interarchy will detect the english text of the message and treat the truncated list as an error.
For more information about a specific Interarchy feature consult the Interarchy Documentation, post a question to the Interarchy User Group, visit the Interarchy website or contact us.
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