Monitor FTP sites with WatchFTP Monitor FTP sites with WatchFTP


 

Troubleshooting

WatchFTP is designed for ease-of-use. However, you may need to experiment to get the best out of your particular setup.

General Advice

If something is not working as expected:

  1. Enable the Keep Session Log option. This keeps all commands/responses to and from your FTP server and writes them to your Task Directory.
  2. Let WatchFTP run for a while.
  3. Stop the Task.
  4. Select View > Task Directory.
  5. Use notepad to view the FTP session log of this Task and see if your FTP server replies with an error message.

Disable this option again after you have fixed the issue!

Connections

Each synchronization requires a fresh connection to the FTP server. Due to limitations in the FTP protocol, these connections will remain "open" for some time, even after WatchFTP has closed the connection. As an FTP server has a limited number of connections available, you should make sure not to Synchronize to "fast" and keep the option Sleep between synchronizations to a reasonable value - at least 10 seconds is advised.

Windows Services

A Windows Service by default runs as the user "LocalSystem". This user has a lot of privileges on the local machine, but typically cannot access network drives.

If your synchronized folder is actually a network directory, the Task requires a Username and Password with proper access to that directory

Debugging your batch script

If you use the Run Batch Script action, the scripts do not display output in a console window.

However, if your script is not functioning properly, the following may help (this assumes your script is called "C:\Scripts\MyScript.bat"):

  1. Create a new batch-script called debugger.bat (listed below) and configure your WatchFTP Task to start this script instead of your original script.
  2. Change your original script to make sure there are no lines that turn echo off (ECHO OFF).

The debugger.bat should look like this: