Plesk with Firewall – FTP: ENTERING PASSIVE MODE is slow and takes a long time

You are using Plesk with a firewall solution like Juggernaut Firewall and FTP connections to your server take long time? Then this article might be helpful for you, especially if it comes to a timeout (connection timed out) or the connection setup is very slow and your FTP client shows “ENTERING PASSIVE MODE” for a long time.

The problem here is mostly with the ports, by the way I recommend to use the ports 49152 to 65535 for security reasons (deviating from the documentation of other manufacturers).

So first we change the ports in the corresponding ProFTPd configuration file:

nano /etc/proftpd/proftpd.conf

and add at the end

PassivePorts 49152 65535

After that we restart the service:

service proftpd restart # Debian
service xinetd restart # Ubuntu

Now we change to the port settings of our firewall and open port 49152 to 65535 for TCP connections (not UDP!). A common notation for this is also

49152:65535

If you use another firewall of your hoster besides the (Plesk Juggernaut) software firewall, you have to open the correct ports here, too.

You need help with Plesk and your server settings? Just write me via my contact form.