Accessing FileZilla SSL from Aptana

We have a production server that is set up with Filezilla FTP server. For obvious security reasons, we require an SSL connection to the server. This works fine with most FTP clients, and can also be used through Aptana (though only the Pro version supports FTPS and SFTP). Aptana has some really nice FTP editing and synchronizing capabilities, but they are, at this time, a bit buggy. I wanted to document some of the hurdles I went through to get them working so that I can remember for next time, and also possibly help out other people struggling with the same things.

The first big problem I ran into is that, for whatever reason, the SSL certificate I have set up on my server is not recognized automatically by Eclipse. The error message in Eclipse is not helpful at all, but what it comes down to is that I have to install my certificate in the java key store that is being used by Eclipse. There is a command line tool to install a certificate, but I recently came across an Eclipse plugin that makes this much easier. It's called Keytool (http://keytool.sourceforge.net/). If you like GUIs, you will appreciate it. If you prefer command line tools, more power to you! Here's the steps I took (I apologize if I gloss over some of the steps -- leave a comment if you need any more info about any of them):

Open a website that uses the SSL certificate in Firefox.
Export the certificate as "X.509 Certificate with chain (PEM)"
Use the Keytool plugin to import the certificate into your java keystore. The default location of the java keystore is [JVM]/lib/security/cacerts. The default password is "changeit". On windows, you will need to run Eclipse as the Administrator in order to change the Java keystore.
Restart Eclipse/Aptana

So far so good. Next, to set up the FTPS connection in Aptana.

In the FTPS site properties, select the connection type of FTPS
In Advanced Properties, set the port to 990, select passive mode, and select the security type of TLS.

Those are the settings that worked for me, at least. One strange thing I noticed is that if I open up the connection properties again and then click the Cancel button, the Advanced Properties settings are cleared out. This is one of the Aptana bugs I am referring to. I think Aptana is great, but is definitely a little polish lacking here and there.

Posted on October 6, 2009 2:40:19 PM EDT by David Hammond

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