Emacs FTP not working for certain sites in Ubuntu

Question

This is really confusing me, because however much I search I don't seem to be able to come across this problem on Google.

I'm trying to edit files on a web server using Emacs Ange-FTP on Ubuntu. I type in /[email protected]:/, Emacs then prompts for a password, which I give, and then it says:

Listing /[email protected]:/...

forever.

What I don't get is that a) the same thing works in Emacs on Windows, b) FTPing to other web servers with the same technique (and with the same web host) works fine, and c) FTPing to this server using gFTP in Ubuntu works fine.

I can't see why this isn't working and it's driving me up the wall! Does anyone have any suggestions?

Answer 1

You could set debug-on-quit and type C-g when Emacs gets stuck to see what's happening at elisp level, and then see if there are any settings you can toggle for your particular situation. But if you can access the host with ssh, you could just skip the debugging and start using Tramp.

Answer 2

Well, stsquad worked it out, it was passive mode not being used for certain servers. Using M-x customize-option RET ange-ftp-try-passive-mode and changing to t (found at EmacsWiki) made it work though.