FTP doesn't work outside local network

  • i'm using OMV6 and i've been trying to get FTP to work remotely for quite some time now. none of the solutions i found online or even on any of these forums worked at all.

    FTP is all correctly setup in OMV and works fine inside local network. i have the ftp port forwarded including passive. i've ran a command to allow the port on the machine itself.

    but it just says "couldn't connect to server" in filezilla.





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  • FTP can be a difficult protocol to get working if both the client and server are behind a NAT. Some consumer home routers provide a proxy or helper function that makes it work properly.


    Having said that, a much better and easier approach is to use SFTP instead. OMV has this capability built in and Filezilla handles it without any special setup or configuration needed. Only one port needs to be forwarded in the router on the server side.

    --
    Google is your friend and Bob's your uncle!


    OMV AMD64 7.x on headless Chenbro NR12000 1U 1x 8m Quad Core E3-1220 3.1GHz 32GB ECC RAM.

  • I've been looking for a way to access my files from outside my home network. Would you happen to know of a good guide (since I am pretty new to OMV/Linux) to help walk me through setting SFTP up and the port forwarding? I've been asking around and everyone tells me "noo.. you need something like Wireguard or Tailscale etc.. " Opening up SFTP is pretty insecure, right?


    thanks!

  • Opening up SFTP is pretty insecure, right?

    Not really insecure if reasonable choices for passwords are made or public keys are used instead.


    If you open the standard TCP port 22 on your router for this it will be heavily attacked by people trying to break in but so long as the chosen password is strong they will fail. You should setup fail2ban on OMV to address this by blocking such attackers. But using a non-standard obscure port number should be done anyway.


    There are two OMV plugins you can use to set this up.


    openmediavault-sftp and

    openmediavault-fail2ban

    --
    Google is your friend and Bob's your uncle!


    OMV AMD64 7.x on headless Chenbro NR12000 1U 1x 8m Quad Core E3-1220 3.1GHz 32GB ECC RAM.

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    • Official Post

    I've been looking for a way to access my files from outside my home network. Would you happen to know of a good guide (since I am pretty new to OMV/Linux) to help walk me through setting SFTP up and the port forwarding? I've been asking around and everyone tells me "noo.. you need something like Wireguard or Tailscale etc.. " Opening up SFTP is pretty insecure, right?

    If you want to use Wireguard it is very easy, there is a plugin for this. https://wiki.omv-extras.org/do…v7:omv7_plugins:wireguard

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