Azure websites ftp upload fails on some files but not others

Question

I've tried uploading an ASP.Net MVC site to an Azure website account and I'm running into a serious problem. Most files will transfer fine but a few will ALWAYS fail.The trouble is that it is always the same files that fail and I cannot figure out why. I've tried deploying from Visual Studio using FTP and the "Web Deploy" methods and I've tried using FTP and FTPS via FileZilla and have the same issue. What might I be doing wrong???

Here's a FileZilla log of the errors I'm seeing.

Status: Resolving address of waws-prod-blu-003.ftp.azurewebsites.windows.net
Status: Connecting to 137.117.88.16:21...
Status: Connection established, waiting for welcome message...
Response:   220 Microsoft FTP Service
Command:    USER xxxxx\xxxxxxxx
Response:   331 Password required
Command:    PASS *********
Response:   230 User logged in.
Command:    OPTS UTF8 ON
Response:   200 OPTS UTF8 command successful - UTF8 encoding now ON.
Status: Connected
Status: Starting upload of C:\websites\HSDeploy\css\bootstrap.min.css
Command:    CWD /site/wwwroot/css
Response:   250 CWD command successful.
Command:    TYPE A
Response:   200 Type set to A.
Command:    PASV
Response:   227 Entering Passive Mode (137,117,88,16,39,138).
Command:    STOR bootstrap.min.css
Response:   550 The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process. 
Error:  Critical file transfer error

This is just an example of one of the files that is failing. Is this a bug in Windows Azure Websites or am I doing something wrong? It seems to me that this is a critical problem and major barrier to getting a site working on Azure. :-(

Answer 1

This sounds like a time-out issue on the server. You will need to tell your FTP client to keep the connection alive so that it doesn't start a second connection while the first connection is still trying to upload the files.

To set this in FileZilla client, go to Edit, Settings, Connection, FTP, and check "Send FTP keep-alive commands" checkbox.

For more detailed explanation of the problem, visit: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/wats/archive/2013/12/13/setting-up-a-passive-ftp-server-in-windows-azure-vm.aspx Scroll towards the bottom and read the "Points to consider from Azure SLB perspective" section.

I had the same problem with my FTP on Azure and checking the "Send FTP keep-alive commands" checkbox above solved my problem.

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

I was having the same issue with Azure + FileZilla. I solved the problem by connecting to the FTP host name and not the FTPS host name.