× The internal search function is temporarily non-functional. The current search engine is no longer viable and we are researching alternatives.
As a stop gap measure, we are using Google's custom search engine service.
If you know of an easy to use, open source, search engine ... please contact support@midrange.com.




Does anyone know why I'm getting this message when trying to FTP to the
IFS of my V5R3 iSeries in FireFox?
The FTP server 215 OS/400 is the remote operating system.  The TCP/IP
version is "V5R3M0". is currently unsupported.

You just want me to tell you why that's happening, and not fix it at all? Great... that'll be my easiest job today.

The problem is that the FTP standard, when it was written, did not designate a particular format for the "list" subcommand. (When you type DIR into an FTP client, it sends the LIST subcommand to the server.)

Anyway, there was no format designated for LIST. Instead, the FTP server could send any format it wanted. The client was supposed to display whatever it was on the user's screen, so as long as the server returned something that a user could read, all was well.

Here's the problem: People started writing GUI FTP clients that not only displayed this screen, but also tried to interpret it's contents. The program itself needed to know which part of the screen was the file type (so a lovely icon could be displayed) what part was the file's name, what part was the size of the file, etc, etc,etc. Since the format of the screen isn't standardized, and the server can send anything it wants, this causes all sorts of weird code to be written.

The Firefox FTP software works by asking the server what type of server it is. In your example, the server is returning something like "The TCP/IP Version is V5R3M0" or something like that. Each individual FTP server returns a different string to identify itself.

There's code in Firefox that looks at this string, and then inteprets the contents of the directory differently, depending on the FTP server you've connected to. Since the format isn't standardized, it has to have separate code for each FTP server type.

The people who wrote firefox didn't write code to handle the OS/400 FTP server -- so it's unrecognized, and you get the error.

As Simon pointed out, I wrote a patch that fixed this bug in Nvu which is code that was originally taken from the same Mozilla project where firefox's roots come from. However, both projects have doubtless changed their code a little bit since then, so I don't know if that patch would help much, and at any rate, they'd have to incorporate it into firefox for you, or you'd have to compile your own copy of firefox to incorporate a change like that. Possible, but somewhat difficult.

Since firefox isn't a very good FTP client, anyway, I have to wonder why you'd bother! If you want firefox to download something from your iSeries, use HTTP. If you want FTP access to your iSeries, use a better FTP client! (FileZilla, for example).


As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

This thread ...

Follow-Ups:
Replies:

Follow On AppleNews
Return to Archive home page | Return to MIDRANGE.COM home page

This mailing list archive is Copyright 1997-2024 by midrange.com and David Gibbs as a compilation work. Use of the archive is restricted to research of a business or technical nature. Any other uses are prohibited. Full details are available on our policy page. If you have questions about this, please contact [javascript protected email address].

Operating expenses for this site are earned using the Amazon Associate program and Google Adsense.