FileZilla/SourceForge Download Manager



  • I'm trying to download the FileZilla server for a small FTP server at work that will become part of our automated build suite. FileZilla's website directs to SourceForge, which apparently no longer hosts direct downloads. When I download the server, instead it launches the SourceForce Download Manager which wants me to install multiple pieces of crapware/adware before getting to the actual download. After carefully navigating the screens so I don't dump crap on this server, it starts the actual FileZilla download...and fails. It claims I have a firewalled proxy preventing it from working. Not true.

    I finally found the direct link which was relatively small and obscure.

    Bonus WTF: I just finished installing the FileZilla server, and it wants to update! Why is the installer not the most recent?!

    Second Bonus WTF: The FileZilla server updater uninstalled the server and then installed the most recent client without installing an updated server! I just love updaters that don't do anything useful!

    Bonus WTF #3: Apparently I never installed the server to begin with! The "direct download" that doesn't use the broken download manager only installs the client, even though the page is for the server. FML.

    Bonus WTF #4 (I'm TRWTF): Somehow I found a server installer that wasn't bundled with crap. However it refuses to install on Windows XP.



  • @mott555 said:

    Why is the installer not the most recent?!

    That would be more work!

    @mott555 said:

    The FileZilla server updater uninstalled the server and then installed the most recent client without installing an updated server! I just love updaters that don't do anything useful!

    This sentence brought this to mind:

    Filed under: Obligatory XKCD, Sorry...


  • Considered Harmful

    It's just updaters all the way down.


    Filed under: Quis updaiet ipsos updateres?


  • 🚽 Regular

    @Keith said:

    Filed under: Obligatory XKCD, Sorry...


  • BINNED

    @mott555 said:

    FileZilla's website directs to SourceForge, which apparently no longer hosts direct downloads. When I download the server, instead it launches the SourceForce Download Manager which wants me to install multiple pieces of crapware/adware before getting to the actual download.

    Is the damned thing OS dependant? I never got the SF downloader of any kind. So either it's opt-in/opt-out option for authors and I only downloaded stuff from sane ones, or SF figured out I'm on Linux and they only have a Windows downloader. I wonder if spoofing the useragent would work...

    @mott555 said:

    Bonus WTF: I just finished installing the FileZilla server, and it wants to update! Why is the installer not the most recent?!

    I see this all the time! Seriously, WTF?



  • I hate to say it but FileZilla is the RWTF here. A client software that takes the view that 'files without extensions are ALWAYS text by default' and won't see it as a bug... ugh.



  • Unless they changed it less than a week ago, no, it's not OS dependant. I downloaded the client one week ago and it was a direct download with no crapware (unless you call Filezilla crapware)



  • In other news, people are still using SourceForge. It's been years since I've actually used it- I figured everyone would have moved to GitHub by now.



  • Believe it or not, not everyone likes Git as a versioning system.



  • @mott555 said:

    I'm trying to download the FileZilla server for a small FTP server at work that will become part of our automated build suite.

    freeSSHd was an easy install on Windows last time I played with it, and freeFTPd is available from the same developer so I'd expect it to be similarly easy. But honestly, FTP is TRWTF. Why design anything around it in 2014? Use ssh and scp instead if you need to go cross-platform. If not, why not just use SMB?



  • Go here: https://filezilla-project.org/
    Alternately, you can also host the FTP on IIS.


  • BINNED

    @mott555 said:

    However it refuses to install on Windows XP

    Sounds like a feature to me.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Zecc said:

    ;

    Wouldn't splitting oxygen atoms be endothermic? I guess they could have crossed a frozen Red Sea.

    Not sure what happens with the hydrogen.


    Filed Under: Pedantic dickweed


  • Fake News

    A simple example can be seen in the combustion of hydrogen and oxygen, a reaction commonly used to fuel rocket engines:

    2H2(g) + O2(g) → 2H2O(g)



  • @boomzilla said:

    Wouldn't splitting oxygen atoms be endothermic? I guess they could have crossed a frozen Red Sea.

    Not sure what happens with the hydrogen.


    Filed Under: Pedantic dickweed

    They could have crossed a frozen Red Sea while sounding like chipmunks.


    Filed under: Or is that helium?



  • We have a mixture of Windows and Linux automated build/packaging machines that need a central repository for storage of output binaries and other intermediate files. I've tried a lot of different things and FTP is by far the easiest to script in all environments. SMB would work if it was all Windows and the automated build service ran as a domain account (apparently not allowed here).

    As for SMB on Linux, I refuse to go there. I got Samba working exactly once in my life, and it took a good two weeks of research (a.k.a. piecing together random steps from random online tutorials all written prior to 2003). Not worth the time.

    I will look into freeFTPd though. FileZilla was a bust. My PC probably has AIDS now and I still don't have a working FTP server.



  • That's where I was. And I'm using Windows XP, if that even has IIS as an option it's going to be an ancient version that probably doesn't work anymore.



  • @mott555 said:

    That's where I was. And I'm using Windows XP, if that even has IIS as an option it's going to be an ancient version that probably doesn't work anymore.

    Not that ancient version.


  • Considered Harmful

    @Arantor said:

    Believe it or not, not everyone likes Git as a versioning system.

    Yeah, but who would want to support those people?


    Filed under: ಠ_ಠ



  • You think you have problems. What do you do if you are one of those people?


  • Considered Harmful

    @Arantor said:

    You think you have problems. What do you do if you are one of those people?

    Go to Bible Camp to pray the SVN away?


    Filed under: I was born this way!, Subversion is subversive.



  • What can I say? SVN fits my working group's (and my personal) workflow better than Github does. Git is an alternative, it doesn't automatically make it better because St Torvalds blesses it.


  • BINNED

    So, I clicked a few links:

    • Only Linux download is for client. It's a .tar.bz2 archive. Downloads the file itself, no downloader.
    • Windows server version - zip archive: downloads the file itself
    • Windows server version - exe installer: downloads the downloader

    So it would seem that you get a downloader when you try to download an executable. Couldn't be arsed to look for something with a binary installer for Linux atm, but seems to hold true for exe files

    EDIT: your body is too similar, we care not for whitespace that breaks lists!


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @lolwhat said:

    A simple example can be seen in the combustion of hydrogen and oxygen, a reaction commonly used to fuel rocket engines:

    No it can't.



  • @mott555 said:

    As for SMB on Linux, I refuse to go there. I got Samba working exactly once in my life, and it took a good two weeks of research (a.k.a. piecing together random steps from random online tutorials all written prior to 2003). Not worth the time.
    If your server is a Windows box and you just need to get at that from Linux clients, SMB/CIFS is completely trouble-free nowadays. For example, on a Debian box you just install cifs-utils, after which you can mount -t cifs //server/share /path/to/mount/point and then use all the standard file manipulation tools in your scripts. Install gvfs-fuse as well and you can browse smb://server/share URLs in the GUI file browser. It's all pretty smooth.



  • @Onyx said:

    Is the damned thing OS dependant? I never got the SF downloader of any kind. So either it's opt-in/opt-out option for authors and I only downloaded stuff from sane ones, or SF figured out I'm on Linux and they only have a Windows downloader. I wonder if spoofing the useragent would work...

    It's project- and user-agent-dependent. Projects can opt-in to the crapware installer, but if you use wget, you still get the clean file (or at least you did the last time I tried).
    Edit: just tried it, still works (you need to wget the link that the green download button points to, not the link you get after you click the green download button).

    @reverendryan said:

    In other news, people are still using SourceForge. It's been years since I've actually used it- I figured everyone would have moved to GitHub by now.

    If your project is fairly popular, it's practically the only viable host for binaries.

    @Nagesh said:

    Alternately, you can also host the FTP on IIS.

    Only if you want to be in a world of pain.
    @mott555 said:
    That's where I was. And I'm using Windows XP, if that even has IIS as an option it's going to be an ancient version that probably doesn't work anymore.

    XP includes IIS 5, but it has a limit of 5 or 10 simultaneous connections, which makes it completely unusable for anything.



  • That still doesn't address that I don't have a domain account for the build system (and I'm not willing to use my account), or the fact that everything in the automated build is scripted so the GUI file browser has no relevance.



  • @ender said:

    If your project is fairly popular, it's practically the only viable host for binaries.

    Guess it's just me, then.

    Filed under: If it's not in the Debian repository, it doesn't exist.



  • @ender said:

    Only if you want to be in a world of pain.

    Without going through pain, one can not ride in Lamborghini car.



  • That depends on who is receiving the pain. I suspect plenty of people are driving Lamborghini cars without them having been in pain before.



  • @Arantor said:

    That depends on who is receiving the pain. I suspect plenty of people are driving Lamborghini cars without them having been in pain before.

    Don't hate Siddharth Mallya and Rahul Gandhi. They were born rich.



  • Exactly, undermining your own point.



  • @Arantor said:

    Exactly, undermining your own point.

    You are in error in assuming that @Nagesh has a point.



  • freeFTPd is a bust too. I get unhandled win32 exceptions when it tries to launch.



  • It looked like he had a point and it sounded like he had a point. I assumed that if something looks like a duck and sounds like a duck... eh this is Nagesh we're talking about. My bad.



  • @reverendryan said:

    Guess it's just me, then.

    Ok, Windows project.



  • SoutceForge projects have to opt in if they "want" that premium crapware downloader (and get a share of the revenues). I don't know any besides FileZilla who did. If you don't want to, you can host your installers as always.

    On the download page they state that "This installer may include bundled offers. Check below for more options.", but I think it is intentional that users miss this... :(



  • @abarker said:

    while sounding like chipmunks.

    I thought it was helium... And if it was hydrogen, then kudos to the guy who tested that out.

    Actually, that would be the most awesome way to go. Inhale the hydrogen, deliver one's parting words sounding like Alvin, and then swallow fire. Yeah.

    @mihi said:

    On the download page they state that "This installer may include bundled offers. Check below for more options.", but I think it is intentional that users miss this...

    Well duh, isn't that the business model of like, half the "freeware" apps nowadays?


    Filed under: the other half is so crappy nobody even thinks they can make money with them



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    I thought it was helium... And if it was hydrogen, then kudos to the guy who tested that out.

    Every kid who has had a balloon knows that helium changes the pitch of your voice (thus the tag on my post). However, since hydrogen also has a very low atomic mass, the effects would be similar, as demonstrated in this video.

    Inhaling Hydrogen H2 – 00:50
    — dchummer CHEMISTRY



  • @Arantor said:

    What can I say? SVN fits my working group's (and my personal) workflow better than Github does. Git is an alternative, it doesn't automatically make it better because St Torvalds blesses it.

    I'm curious as to how svn fits your workflow better, as I am not aware of anything you can do in svn that you also can't do in git (usually identically or with about the same effort) or other DVCS'es*.

    Not that there's much wrong with SVN and I can certainly see why you don't see the need for replacement, but I would think that the ability to commit offline and proper merging are a boon to any dev.
    To me DVCS v.s. CVCS is one of those "Once you're used to it you don't want to go back" situations.

    * Except maybe a repository of a lot of/extremely large binary files of which you usually only want the latest set like game assets, which is inconvenient with a DVCS because you have to download the whole repo. But one could arcue that is abusing your source code management system.



  • Our overall methodology is about iterations on top of what's there, with little overall interaction between members of the group - i.e. there's defined interfaces in the code and provided those are held as promises, it's all good. (It's a little trick we like to call communication)

    The whole branching thing just doesn't work for us, and while yes you can do the push thing with Git without any branching, it's just easier for us. Especially since TortoiseSVN is nicer than any of the Git clients seem to be though SourceTree isn't terrible.

    Just note: I have used Git, it's not like I'm in the SVN cave and afraid to come out. I've tried both, but Git doesn't work for me as well as SVN does, and neither does it for our group. That's the great thing about choice, everyone's got one that works for them.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @ender said:

    If your project is fairly popular, it's practically the only viable host for binaries.

    There's quite a few other options. Launchpad is quite good (competent metadata is a nice thing) but has a size limit of 200MB per file. Bitbucket can hold larger things (and I've less experience with it, so I can't really comment directly).


  • Banned

    GitHub also have a "Releases" thing, not sure what the limits are.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @dtech said:

    I'm curious as to how svn fits your workflow better, as I am not aware of anything you can do in svn that you also can't do in git (usually identically or with about the same effort) or other DVCS'es*.

    People used to (sanely-used) SVN might prefer one of the other DVCSes to git, e.g., one that has an option to automatically synch during the commit process. The madder parts of SVN (trunk in branches in tags, oh my!) are best just being left quietly on one side where they can be forgotten.

    Git's workflow is rather difficult to get used to; it's too easy to get into the situation of having to do things the hard way.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    Oh, I forgot them. We took the policy decision to not use them for that in one project I'm involved in precisely because we wanted to keep the master copy of our source there. (Our binaries are… rather bloated1, given that they've not got a significant amount of assets in there.)

    Another project I'm involved in just doesn't care for git very much, and runs its own repository (using fossil, which has both good and bad points) with mirrors into git by some community members.


    1 This is, of course, a massive understatement. Some dependent libraries are present 8 times in different versions. I ought to write it up for the sidebar sometime…


  • Banned

    Fossil is quite a facinating project, have major respect for Richard Hipp, I even did my tiny little part to help him back in the day when I hosted the original sqlite.org site (and bought the domain)


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    Yeah, he's a nice guy and seriously competent programmer.



  • @dkf said:

    Git's workflow is rather difficult to get used to; it's too easy to get into the situation of having to do things the hard way.

    Like what? As a recent convert from SVN to DVCS (hg), I haven't managed to get myself into any situation that was worse than what I got myself into with SVN, and trying to do the branch-per-feature thing with SVN's merging got me in to a couple doozies.



  • Can't speak for hg but I've seen cases where Git repos can be damaged sporadically (or in some cases, regularly) requiring all kinds of voodoo and rebasing to get them straight. If you can't rely on your VCS to behave and not make you work extra hard, something is wrong.

    Mind you, any tool that makes me do more work is a tool I don't want to use. I prefer my tools to get out of my face and just behave.


  • Banned

    @Arantor said:

    voodoo and rebasing to get them straight

    I think git is pretty robust these days, in the last year and more I have never seen a corrupt git repo for Discourse.

    Voodoo rebasing does happen though, its part of the price you pay if you want a linear history (but its not without its own price https://blog.glyphobet.net/essay/2504 )

    Overall Git the technology is awesome, Git the usability (command line) leaves a lot to be desired.


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