OOTP could not connect to server.
 

I am the commissioner of an online league. In the past week, only two of my GMs have been able to export to FTP - all the others, me included, get an error message saying "Could not upload file. Error -201: Connect error". I am unable to connect to upload anything, either, as OOTP does not recognize the server at all, although it's worked fine for a long time before. If I try to test the connection, it tells me: "OOTP could not connect to server". Oddly, I can connect to the server via regular FTP, outside OOTP. The FTP port is the default 21 from within OOTP. I've tried with backup files to check if there was something wrong with the file itself, but apparently not, since the backup files do not work either. I tried reinstalling, to no avail. It's been a little over a week since this has been happening, and everything seems to indicate that the problem lies between OOTP's ability to recognize the server, since all other variables I could think of are seemingly ok.

I'm running 2.02.

And yet two of your GMs can export to the server? That seems...odd. The game hasn't changed in the past week (unless you only just switched to the 2.0.2 patch?), so the fact that you could use your server before would seem to suggest that it's a server problem, not an OOTP one. Granted, the fact that you can connect through other programs does suggest the opposite.

Just for the sake of more data points, as Commish, are you able to export successfully to any other servers (assuming you have FTP access to any other sites that you could test with)?

- Kai

One GM managed to export once - I don't know if he's tried since. The other says that it's on/off, that it won't work once but a few seconds later, it will. If it were "regular" in that way, I would've found out, I tried literally hundreds of times to connect.

I would've liked to try other servers, but I don't have access to anything else, so it's the only missing point.

As I mentioned, the only two things I can think of are that either OOTP has a problem in itself, or that there is something on the server that makes OOTP, and only OOTP, unable to connect to it.

Thanks. :)

I'm going to ask one of the people in power if there's a way to get OOTP to display or log the full details of an FTP session. I think it would help if we could figure out exactly what part of the process is causing the problem - is OOTP not finding the server? Does the server not respond? Not recognize the username? Etc.

I don't know if that's possible or how long it will take, but I'll update this thread when I know more. For now, the best I can suggest is that you advise your GMs to send in their exports by e-mail until we can decipher where the problem lies.

- Kai

Thanks!

Yeah, we're slowingour pace and going by email for now.

FWIW, I tried to create a new ftp account, and the new user/pass combination didn't work any better.

Dola,

I omitted saying that I tried to change the FTP port, to puzzling results. When I try port 21, it tells me after 1 or 2 seconds that it cannot connect. When I try another (supposedly open) port, it takes much more time for OOTP to tell me that it cannot connect.

Actually, I found a freeware app that will do what I want, without needing to involve any of the busy SI-employed folks around here. Would you be willing to PM me the FTP information for your league (all the settings under "Online Options" in OOTP), so I can try to connect myself and see what the log shows?

(If not, I can give you the link to the program and you can try it for yourself. Either way will work. :))

- Kai

I'd rather do it myself, of course :).

OK. Here's the free program I found to do this. Once installed, it will create a .txt file in a specified folder on your computer for each program that accesses the 'net, and prints all the communication in the file. When you use OOTP's FTP features, you'll see something like this at the start of the log file it creates:

That, of course, is a log for a successful connection attempt. I would suspect that yours will be shorter since it's going to error out somewhere. Try to connect, and then copy/paste the contents of the log file into a post so we can try to fix it. :) (Feel free to do the same thing I did in my example above, and **** out the username/password info if you like.) If it fails to connect at all, it won't print anything in the log, but if it's something in the login process, we should be able to spot it. Either way, we'll be able narrow down the problem.

Please note that I don't vouch for anything about that program beyond that it does what I want. I've only known about its existence for about 20 minutes. ;)

- Kai

Well, here is what it produced when I tried to import a team file:


The same thing happens when I try to export, or test the connection.

Still not working, sadly :(.

Bump!

I think the problem might not be the game. If you'd like, I can give you a temporary FTP account on my server that you can try with your league. If it connects to my server, then we can narrow down the cause to a server/settings issue.

PM me if you want to try.

Fidel really helped me out here, providing me with another ftp location to check. It went fine.

So, where can I go from here? I'm in unchartered territory here - perhaps permissions editing? I'm making stuff up, I have absolutely no idea how to fix this.

I briefly changed my permissions to 777 instead of 755 for the general and export folders, to no avail.

Still, what's weird is that I only have trouble connecting from within OOTP, not from outside.

Can you tell me who your host is? If you'd like, you can PM me your FTP info and password and I can take a look from my end.

As this thread has received no reply in three days, it will be closed for housekeeping purposes. If you need any further assistance with this issue, please post a link to this thread in Tech Support. Thanks.