Online File Folder Gripes

May 22, 2008

More failures from my sort-of automated FTP uploads by Winzip.
Job File: C:\winzip\Morning.Incremental.Offsite.wjf
Zip File: V:\WinZip.Offsite.Backups\Morning_Offiste_Incrementals-2008-05-22-11-11-18.zip
Job Started: 5/22/2008 11:11 AM
copying Zip file
Description: The connection with the server was reset
Error code 12031 : InternetConnect Failed
Connect failed, FTP upload canceled
Job Finished: 5/22/2008 11:11 AM

Ran FTP manually and the FTP log file continues to be full of timeout errors. But, I was able to upload a file.

I contacted technical support, send them a full log from my FTP client and got this very disappointing response:

In order to further assist you with this matter, we will need the domain name in question, as well as the customer number for your account. Additionally, we may need to reveal account specific information. Before we can give out any information on the account, we will need to verify the last 4 digits of a credit card, PayPal Billing Agreement/Account Number, or Support PIN on the account. Payment information on the account can be found under ‘Credit Card & Payment Info’ from the ‘My Account’ dropdown.

The problem has nothing to do with a domain at all. They want billing info to solve a technical problem. Plus, I had already provided by customer number.

May 25, 2008: The next response from tech support was equally disappointing. They don't seem competent, which worries me much more than any one problem. They responded that they couldn't reproduce the problem. Neither can I, it has fortunately gone away. However, an FTP server program should have a log file. They should be able to review the errors without having to try and reproduce anything. Also, they asked for tracert output. Tracert is a debugging tool when you can't reach a website, which was never the issue.

May 21, 2008

Another FTP upload failure. I manually did an FTP upload after my automated one failed and the manual one failed too. Every time I did a directory listing using my FTP client is was, again, very slow. When FTP failed, I logged on to onlinefilefolder.com and an upload there failed too. No error messages though. Here is the error log from my FTP program:

connecting to 64.202.165.23:44581
! Connection failed 64.202.165.23 - connection timed out
! connect: error 0
PORT 192,168,1,12,15,41
200 PORT command successful. Consider using PASV.
STOR Important.Folders-Wed.zip
150 Ok to send data.
Transmitted 16999430 bytes in 480.0 secs, (347.21 Kbps), transfer succeeded
451 Failure writing to OFF database, saving file.
PWD

May 19, 2008

Same problem as last week, the FTP upload could not delete a file with the same name. I tried the FTP interface and it was very slow. I renamed the file so it wouldn't have to be deleted....

May 11, 2008

After traveling for a while, I return home to my main computer and run an automated backup that invokes FTP. It fails. This particular backup uploads a file that already exists and is configured to delete the old copy of the file. It was the deleting that failed.

But, after some investigation, it seems the problems are much worse and affect both the FTP and website interfaces. The biggest problem is that I can't add new files to my account. I also can't rename and can't delete files. These operations fail using both the websiste and FTP. Basically, my account is read-only.

I opened a trouble ticket on the GoDaddy website but then called for tech support on the phone. Someone answered the phone immediately and was polite and helpful, but the end result was that they don't know what's wrong and my problem had to be escalated to really advanced techies who will get back to me by email.

The problem was resolved in a few hours, or so it appeared. I was able to add, delete and rename files using both my FTP program and the OnlineFileFolder.com website. But, the next time I ran a backup, it again failed, with the same error of not being able to delete the old copy of the file with the same name. When I renamed the old copy of the file, the backup worked fine - no deleting involved. Here is the log from WinZip which is doing the FTP
copying Zip file
Unable to delete remote file, upload cancelled
The FTP upload has been canceled because of errors.

This problem went away by itself, tech support didn't say they fixed it, in fact, they were asking for moe details on the problem when it went away.

Problem With FTP Access

December 4, 2007: My automated FTP backups to Online File Folder failed to connect both today and yesterday. Manually connecting with FTP today worked fine. Yesterday, I used the website to upload files and that worked fine.

May 23, 2007: My automated FTP backups to Online File Folder failed today. Shortly thereafter I tried a manual FTP upload and it failed mid-stream. In the middle of uploading a 1.8MB file the connection was reset. Then I logged on to the website and was able to upload the file. Currently I am only using 38% of my allocated storage space.

Update:The same thing happened a few hours later with another automated FTP upload. Again, a manual FTP upload of the single 7MB file I cared about also failed. And the problems continued the next morning where the same automated upload again failed to connect to the FTP server run by Online File Folder. Again, I tried a manual FTP upload and although the one file I needed to copy worked, my FTP program hung immediately thereafter and then the connection died. Immediately thereafter I uploaded another file and the pattern repeated itself. This time however, I had to use Task Manager to kill my FTP program.

I contact tech support and as before their response was totally useless.

...we are not experiencing any issues. You may want to try changing your password.

They are indeed experiencing "issues", they just don't know it.

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March 13, 2007: I have been using Online File Folder (OFF) for almost a year but a couple months ago started using them more seriously. Whereas I initially just used the website interface, I now use FTP access to upload files every day as part of a backup scheme that I documented on my personal site: Best File Backup Scheme.

I had been working fine until yesterday with the FTP upload of my daily files hung for about 10 or 15 minutes before WinZip gave up and issued an error. It wasn't a fluke, re-running the WinZip job produced the same result. I then tried to access my OFF account using an FTP program and it too hung, either during the logon process or just afterwards. I was, however, able to use the website to log into my account. Obviously the problem was restricted to their FTP interface.

Things always go wrong, I expect that. The gripe here though is how the company handled it.

For one, there was no message about any problems when I logged on to my account at www.onlinefilefolder.com.

So I opened a support ticket and the response was basically that I typed the password wrong. Either

• They knew about a problem and wouldn't come clean about it  -OR-
• They did not even know there was a problem 

Either possibility says a lot about the company to me. Now I know how much to trust them and so do you. 

This is what I asked tech support:

I can't make an FTP connection to www.onlinefilefolder.com. This has worked many times in the past. I can however, log on to onlinefilefolder.com just fine.

Their response is shown below. Makes me wonder if they even read the problem description.

Please ensure you are using the correct information when trying to connect. You can also use other methods to connect to Online File Folder. Please see the link below for instructions on connecting to Online File Folder using FTP, and other methods. http://help.godaddy.com/article.php?article_id=1108&topic_id=&prog_id=GoDaddy&

 

Worse than being merely useless, the above actually contains a mistake. The web page address was cut off. URLs never end with an ampersand and it's used to indicate another parameter follows. And clicking on the link took me to a broken web page. Click the thumbnail to see a full size screen shot.

I know something about URLs and guessed that the end of the URL was not needed, so I tried help.godaddy.com/article.php?article_id=1108 and the web page displayed perfectly.

That tech support would send a bad URL in their response tells me a lot. 

Gripes In No Particular Order

Above are details of problems with the FTP access. When I wanted to open a problem with tech support, I logged in to the OFF website and looked for a link. There aren't any. You have to log in to GoDaddy to submit a problem to tech support. I have my OFF userid/password memorized because I use it often, but I don't know those from my GoDaddy account off the top of my head. You probably won't either. May 23, 2007.

They offer file access via WebDav, a standard that makes your remote files seem as if they were local. That is, you can browse them with Windows Explorer.

Except that it doesn't work. 

I first tried it in early 2006 and tech support was no help in getting it working other than to say it only works from IE and not from Firefox. At the time there was a consistent error (when using IE) about certificate revocation that couldn't be found. After that warning, I tried copying a 5MB file and after copying a long time, got an error "An error occurred copying some or all of the selected files". What error occurred? It didn't say. Where can I see the details on the error? I didn't say. And neither did tech support.   

I tried it again when creating this web page (March 13, 2007). While using IE, I logged on to my account at their website and clicked on the link to "Open as web folder". This resulted an error: "Internet Explorer could not open [URL} as a web folder. Would you like to see its default view instead". Saying yes resulted in a userid/password prompt and after correctly entering my userid/password I was shown a totally blank web page with a URL of: 

   https://onlinefilefolder.com/webdav/index.php/myuserid/

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Their file synchronization tool is only capable of synching a single folder. 

They offer server side encryption, but you can not select an entire folder for encryption. The error message says you must select one file. 

FYI

Finding Online File Folder is hard. Their home page has no link to either a description of the service or a sign up page. They are associated with GoDaddy and you sign up at godaddy.com. But even there, its hard to find them as it is under "Email" on the green menu bar. 

They don't offer any flavor of secure FTP.

The website has a File Editing Tool that appears when using IE but not when using Firefox. 

You can't change your password at their home page, instead you have to do it at godaddy.com. And the procedure is long and convoluted.