[R-SIG-Mac] ftp on new macs

[Thomas Lumley]

On my new macbook I have had trouble sending things to CRAN by ftp. This 
message is intended to provide help for people with similar difficulties, 
and to see if there are better solutions.

The ftp client tries to use Extended Passive Mode for the transfer, and 
nothing happens until it times out (except that a zero-length file is 
created at the other end, preventing a second try). I don't know whether 
the problem is in the firewall or at CRAN, but in any case it doesn't 
work.

Something that does work is to use the ftp command
   epsv4
at the start of the session (at least before the put command).  This makes 
the ftp client use the old-fashioned passive mode rather than extended 
passive mode.  It seems that there should be a better solution, but I 
don't know what it is.

 	-thomas

Thomas Lumley			Assoc. Professor, Biostatistics
tlumley at u.washington.edu	University of Washington, Seattle