FTP Error Connection Timed Out

[Robobod]

Hi,
I dont know if anyone can help but Ive been trying to upload changes to my site (which has been no problem for the past few months) but yesterday it all went wrong, When I Update Site I get a error message, it gets as far as "checking search indices" and wont go past the "creating remote directory structure" giving me an error message saying "An FTP error occurred. Error: A connection with the server could not be established"
I have tried refreshing the website but again it gets to a certain point of the refresh, normally the same point as the update, sometimes a little further and I get the same error message as above come up, all I have done in the past few days is add Sizes and change the shipping and handling costs within the site, ever since Im getting this error message, the site is now not fully showing, the homepage is fine but the links off it are all down.
Can anyone help with this, I have an oldish version of Actinic, not the Business one.
Thanks for any help
Rob

[Duncan Rounding]

There are two possibilties:
1. You have made a change that has affected the preuplooad checking
- Backup and then roll back to an earlier snapshot ans ee if it uploads ok.
2. Your host has made a change.
- Run the network test and check for errors.

[Robobod]

Okay ive run the network test and got the following messgage

The wizard needs to know the unique identifier to be used for the CGI scripts for this Catalog site. This identifer is used to generate a unique name for each Catalog script and allows the scripts to co-exist in the CGI-BIN directory with other Catalog sites. The identifier should be numeric and in the range of 0 to 32767

Should I Know This number?

Rob

[Robobod]

Could this be a problem with the server rather than my website?

[Duncan Rounding]

You don't need to run the wizard - just the network test.

[Robobod]

Where abouts is that on the program?

[Duncan Rounding]

Web - Network Setup - Test (Button on RHS)

[Robobod]

Okay Ive Done that and got the following Message

An error occurred when trying to connect to the server. This can happen when the server is unreachable or you have set up an SSL server, but this server can not accept SSL connections, or Windows is confused about proxy settings. If you have Internet Explorer or another application configured to work with a proxy, the settings should be the same for Actinic. Please check your connection first.

Any suggestions frm here?

[pinbrook]

We need to know - who is the host, what package, and network settings.

are you using ssl? has it expired?

[Eileen]

I am having something similar - trying to test network settings for Actinic V9
The symptom seems to be that Actinic is trying to have too many simultaneous FTP connections open to the server.

With a fresh instance of Actinic opened, I go thru the Actinic Network wizard and I can connect from the FTP setup (1 connection), from the website address screen (2 connections)... Actinic briefly shows a window spinning through some filenames, so it has connected, then I get Connection Wizard error message: The wizard is unable to login to the FTP server (my server name). The server is not currently accepting connections. Try again later. The specific error is: the login request was denied.

I then try to connect with CUTEFTP and get:

[30/08/2009 08:38:56] 421 Too many connections (3) from this IP
ERROR:> [30/08/2009 08:38:56] Service unavailable. Try again later.

When I close Actinic and bingo, CUTEFTP is able to connect.

So..... does Actinic really need to have 3 or more simultaneous FTP connections?

[Eileen]

I've just spoken to my ISP, querying the number of connections allowed from IP, and asking if they can raise the threshold.

The answer is: no they will not raise the threshold, as it is in place to prevent DNS attacks.

So... can Actinic have an option to use only one FTP stream?

[pinbrook]

TBH i think your solution should be the reverse here, ie use a host/isp that allows simultaneous ftp connections.

Actinic has recently done a great deal of work in improving the upload speed so it is unlikley that reducing it to one stream would be considered the way forward, although i understand you are asking for a choice of 1 or multiples.

If you are using v8 or 9 i would imagine using 1 stream will grind an upload to a dead crawl - when 8 first came out people were finding uploads where taking hours, now with the improvements this has been reduced to minutes again.
if you have plans to upgrade past 7, you may find yourself forced to look elsewhere anyway.

[Eileen]

I've decided to ignore the errors from the test-the-network-connection settings and simply decided that since they worked for v8, they should work for v9.

I've been happily uploading and playing with our test site all morning with no FTP errors - I'm only getting them when playing with the network config panels.