Happy to help if I can, IT_Architect. I had to fight with this for a day or so. The following just reflects my current understanding - usual caveats apply.
The 'what' was pretty easy; the 'why' was a little more interesting.
Basically, I downloaded and used the 'proftpd' package from (11th post in this thread) but I needed to do a bit extra to get it working in my environment. I'm using ESXi 3.5 U4 Embedded (the free version) in a home office with no local DNS. We use the ISP's DNS servers for internet lookups, but so far as I know we cannot resolve our own hostnames on their DNS servers. For Windows machines in our Workgroup that's OK because they use WINS, with NetBIOS lookups on our gateway (i.e. our LAN router - e.g. 192.168.0.1). But for Linux it's different - now there may be a way to deploy WINS on Linux to get it to do NetBIOS lookups as well, but I didn't want to risk messing with ESXi too much. So for example, the ESXi server has a <hostname> and it grabs the <DNS suffix> from the ISP's DNS servers, but when I do "Test Management Network" and it trys to resolve <hostname>.<DNS suffix> this step always fails.
Here's what I did:
1) Download the 'proftpd' package, unzip it and read the instructions from the post referred to above.
2) Get into the ESXi Tech Support Mode (it's Linux command-line). Edit (vi) the /etc/inetd.conf to remove the comment from '#ssh' to enable ssh and scp, and include the 'ftp' line for the above package:
ftp stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd proftpd
3) THIS IS THE EXTRA BIT: On the ESXi server, edit (vi) the /etc/hosts file to include the line:
127.0.0.1 <hostname>.<DNS suffix>
Make sure the <DNS suffix> is exactly what you see on the ESXi Management Console (including any '.' at the end).
4) Deploy the 'proftpd' package to the ESXi server. I edited out the anonymous login information at the end of the proftpd.conf file. I use a Linux client to connect to ESXi and deploy with the following script:
#!/bin/sh
echo copying proftpd files...
scp tcpd proftpd proftpd.conf root@<ip-address>:
echo deploying proftpd files...
ssh root@<ip-address> << eof
chmod 644 proftpd.conf
mv proftpd.conf /etc
mv tcpd proftpd /sbin
ps | grep inetd | awk '{ print \$1 }' | xargs kill -HUP
eof
echo done
5) Use 'ftp' clients to connect to the ESXi server.
Note: If you're using 'andLinux' like me, you'll need to 'set passive' in your ftp session because the 'andLinux' connection looks like it's coming from it's Windows host and the ESXi server cannot make the ftp 'data' connection back to 'andLinux'.
Note: The edits to /etc/inetd.conf and /etc/hosts get remembered through ESXi restarts. So it's just necessary to redo step 4).
Here's why I did it:
a) The infamous 'i/o errors' trying to do VI Client datastore downloads of large VMDK files.
b) The RCLI vifs.pl uses HTTP GET, but eventually gave me 500 read errors.
c) Internet Explorer on the '<ip address>/folder' could not download VMDK files -> bad HTTP error
d) Veeam Backup and FastSCP is fast and can work fine, but for me, it too had it's moments - probably because my Windows XP machine is so flakey (it's a cow).
e) The ftp server daemon must be able to resolve it's own hostname. Luckily for me, ftp appears to use 'nslookup' to resolve this.
Test this by doing 'nslookup <hostname>.<DNS suffix>' from the ESXi server - it should be able to find itself now.
Note that my ESXi "Test Management Network" still cannot resolve <hostname>.<DNS suffix> even though /etc/host.conf says 'order hosts,bind' - so I assume that it's trying to bind at the ISP's DNS server regardless.
f) I had read on the internet about uncommenting the existing '#ftp' line in the /etc/inetd.conf file, but this didn't work for me. I'm not entirely surprised because I cannot see what 'in.ftpd' refers to - maybe I'm missing something. I am a bit curious about this though...
g) I get ftp speeds similar to Veeam Backup and FastSCP - about 11.5 MBps. Good enough for me.
Hope this helps somebody.
