Access FTP via HTTP?

Question

We have an external secure FTP server that we want to access through HTTPS (our infrastructure does not support FTPs). I know that's possible but I don't know how. I'm looking for something like this: ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/zz http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/zz

Thanks!

Answer 1

To add some clarification: FTP and HTTP are, as SLaks said, two entirely different things. The links you have posted use two separate protocols. One if ftp, and one is http. You appear to be getting confused by the second link because it still has ftp in it. What is happening there is that "ftp.mozilla.org" is the domain name of that server. the pages themselves look similar because there is not actual page you are referencing (you are visiting the directory itself) and there is no default page specified in that directory (for example, no index.html).

The default behavior in this case is to simply list the directory contents, which is pretty much what the ftp protocol does anyway.

So:

You will need to either install a web server program (not an ftp server program!) on the ftp server (the physical box) and let users download files using the http(s) protocol, or you will as SLaks suggested need to create your own proxy (or find one that exists) that will receive commands from the http protocol and transform them into the equivalent ftp commands, which are then sent to the ftp server.

Personally, I recommend the former, as it is less complicated.

Answer 2

FTP and HTTP are two different protocols that have nothing to do with each-other.

You need to run an HTTP server.

You can either run an HTTP server that exposes the same files (like Mozilla does), or write an HTTP proxy for the FTP server.