Secure FTP with Sellerdeck and Bitvise

[Mike Hughes]

Sellerdeck V18 supports FTP Secure (FTPS) typically supported on Windows servers but does not support Secure FTP (SFTP) which is used on most unix servers.

Fortunately there is a piece of software called Bitvise Client which is free and can do the bridging between the FTP that Sellerdeck uses and the Secure FTP that many unix servers require. This will work with all versions of Sellerdeck and is very easy to use. It is fast and effective.

You can download the Bitvise client from here: https://www.bitvise.com/download-area

You only need to consider two of the tabs in Bitvise Client.

1. The Login tab.

This controls the connection to the Secure FTP server on your web server.

On the Login Tab

• Enter your FTP host name from your web host
• Set the port to 22
• Enter your FTP username
• Select ‘Password’ from the ‘Initial Method’ drop down below the username. Enter your FTP password. Tick the box for 'Store encrypted Password in profile'.
• I unticked the box labelled 'Enable password over kbdi fallback'. it may or may not make a difference.
• Save the Profile
• Click Log In
• The first time you do this you'll see a window about a new host key. This is setting up the Secure Shell connection. Click 'Accept and Save'

2. The 'Services' Tab.

This is where you setup the Sellerdeck side of the bridge

• Tick the ‘FTP-to-SFTP Bridge’ box
• Set the Listen Interface to 127.0.0.1 and the Listen port to 21
• You don't need to set the password here.
• Save the profile again.

That is Bitvise all set up and running. Once you have logged in it will keep running in the background until you click 'Exit'. You can close the window using the x on the top right corner and it will still keep running.



3. Now all you have to do is set up sellerdeck to talk to the Bitvise Client.

Open Sellerdeck. Go to Web > Network Setup.

In Network Settings:

- First Export your network settings as a backup. It's always wise to have a backup just in case.
- In the FTP Details box, change the Server Host setting to 127.0.0.1
- Make sure you have Port 21 set, 'Use Passive FTP' ticked and 'Use Secure FTP' unticked.
- Click Apply
- Run a network test. It should pass.

You're all set.

Mike

[KarenBM]

Hi Mike, Ionos are turning off all not secure FTP connections, any day, which means that orders cannot be downloaded. Have you found a way around this with Bitwise?
Thanks so much as always.

[Mike Hughes]

Hi Karen,

Orders will continue to download as normal as they don't use FTP.

Bitvise works well as described above for doing uploads / updates, etc. I've been using it solidly for a year now without any problems.

The odd thing I find with Ionos is that they keep saying they're going to turn off insecure FTP but as I sometimes use an old ftp program that doesn't support secure ftp to check files on my website and upload the occasional image then they keep telling me that they're postponing implementation for me as they can see I'm still sometimes using plain FTP.

Regards

Mike

[KarenBM]

Hi Mike, Thank you for your reply

It's odd because I repeatedly get "connection with server is reset" whenever I try to download orders. Uploads through Bitwise is fine.

Ionos sent me an email saying that as I still use insecure FTP I need to change that before the end of this month, i.e. today.So I wonder where it thinks I use that? I haven't had any email saying they will postpone implementation. How is the request for access to orders to download etc accessed if not through FTP?

[Mike Hughes]

Actinic is not that intelligent in its order download. It just looks for all files with an extension of *.ord and then downloads them.

It does download them via HTTP via a call to the Perl files, so you may want to check that you have the correct cgi-bin URL in 'Advanced | Network Setup' and that you also have the correct path from the cgi-bin folder to the acatalog folder.

You could also FTP up to your site and change all permissions to 777 on the acatalog folder.

If this does not work, it may be worth asking the email support team to look at your site. You can register an email support question here

https://community.sellerdeck.com/for...8855#post68855

I would check the two things Chris Dicken refers to in his post. The permissions on the acatalog folder and the two cgi-bin settings.

[gcamley]

I would strongly advise against setting permissions to 777. So long as the process that runs the scripts has the same user and group as the acatalog folder then 755 will suffice. Giving world write access to a folder on a shared server will allow scripts in other sites to add files to the acatalog folder

[Mike Hughes]

I agree. I would only suggest 777 to debug a permissions problem and then drop back to more a secure setting, checking at each stage.

[KarenBM]

I tried all of that when I initially had the upload problem which led to Bitwise, you yourself checked them out if you remember Mike? Permissions etc seem correct.
But if Sellerdeck access the server to check for orders via unsecured http, as Chris Dicken refers to, will that not now create problems?

[Mike Hughes]

Sorry Karen, I've been away for a couple of days.

Yes, BitVise is needed for uploads Sellerdeck using secure FTP on some hosts, typically Unix based servers rather than windows.

As we went over last summer, Sellerdeck uses http for the order downloads, not FTP so this is most likely unrelated to the upload problems or bitvise.

We did look at the settings and permissions when these order download problems started. Did the problem ever get better? Are you still on V14?

I can't remember if we went over it the last time or not but it might be worth checking that Sellerdeck (Catalog.exe) isn't being blocked by your firewall.

Mike