Prolong the FTP Experience

October 20, 2004 Hey, Ted

When I log in to our iSeries system through an FTP client, a message informs me that my connection will close if it remains idle for more than five minutes. Sometimes I have several tasks to perform between FTP commands, and the system times me out. Can I increase the time-out setting?

–Doug

The FTP server controls the inactivity time-out. The default setting for this value is 300 seconds, but it can be changed with the Change FTP Attributes (CHGFTPA) command. Since you’re working from the client side, you can change the timeout interval for your session by running the TIME server command.

To run a server command, use the client’s QUOTE command, which passes its arguments as a command to the FTP server. In the following example, the inactivity time-out is set to 10 minutes:

quote time 600

The FTP server will respond with a message informing you of the new inactivity timeout setting:

250 Inactivity time-out set to 600 seconds.

The TIME command can also be used to set the file transfer time-out setting, which defaults to 420 seconds. Follow the inactivity time-out with a space and the file transfer time-out.

 quote time 1800 3600
 250-File transfer time-out value set to 3600 seconds.
 250 Inactivity time-out set to 1800 seconds.

–Ted