Weave me a dream. Weave, damn you!

December 7, 2005 8:07 PM

Dreamweaver 8 (on OS X 10.3.9) seems to have forgotten how to authenticate via SFTP, and at the worst possible time. Help!

Recently I set up a new site in Dreamweaver, to be uploaded to a dedicated server on which I also host several other sites, many of them managed in Dreamweaver. The new site failed to authenticate -- but more worryingly, none of my other sites will authenticate now, either, and I didn't change any of their settings. I can still log into ssh via command line and sftp via Cyberduck, both using the same username and password I'm trying in Dreamweaver.

The error I get from Dreamweaver is: "An FTP error occurred - cannot make connection to host. Your login or password is incorrect. Please check your connection information." My SSH logs on the server are no help, either -- if I give Dreamweaver a bad username, I do get an "Invalid user" log entry, so I know a connection is being made, but if the information is correct in Dreamweaver I get no log entries at all on the server.

I've tried using a different (valid) username and password. I've tried switching to a different server -- the only servers Dreamweaver is able to log into are ones that use regular FTP rather than SFTP, and I'd rather not enable FTP on my server. I tried trashing the preferences and deleting the relevant entries in Keychain. I've tried different subdirectories on the server, and checked the permissions on the existing directories. Nothing works. Any other ideas?

posted by Acetylene to computers & internet (12 comments total)

Reinstall DW?
posted by Rothko at 8:11 PM on December 7, 2005

Just tried that, Rothko, and still no love. Thanks anyway.

Anyone else?
posted by Acetylene at 8:36 PM on December 7, 2005

is your path to the location of the web files on the server correct in the Dreamweaver hosts set up? It may be making a connection but not able to find the path to the files.
posted by jazon at 8:38 PM on December 7, 2005

Yeah, the path is correct -- I've even tried specifying the full path (i.e. /home/myusername/mydirectory ). It was working a couple of days ago on the other sites I manage, with no changes between then and now, but now those don't work, either. And when the path has been a problem in the past, it gave an error message specifically about not being able to find the specified directory -- this time I'm getting an authentication error.
posted by Acetylene at 8:43 PM on December 7, 2005

The DW newsgroups are pretty active. This might be something you want to try asking over there?
posted by misterbrandt at 8:57 PM on December 7, 2005

Thanks for the tip, misterbrandt; I've now posted my question there as well.
posted by Acetylene at 9:16 PM on December 7, 2005

Maybe it's the firewall preventing it?

Have you upgraded OS X recently? A security upgrade? The firewall might be blocking certain ports. Although that wouldn't explain how the other apps can do it.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 11:56 PM on December 7, 2005

Oh and forgot to say, Passive FTP setting would be worth checking.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 11:57 PM on December 7, 2005

Going for the triple ... there's a note about this in DreamWeaver Tech Support. But it assumes there's something wrong on the server.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 12:13 AM on December 8, 2005

Did you try connecting with one of the other SFTP clients?
Did you try connecting from another computer?
posted by Sharcho at 3:53 AM on December 8, 2005

AmbroseChapel: no firewall. There was an OS X security upgrade recently, so I guess that's a possibility, although it doesn't explain why I'm able to connect in other apps. Passive FTP is grayed out when Secure FTP is selected. And I do have PasswordAuthentication enabled on the server.

Scharco: yes, Cyberduck is another SFTP client (first one listed in your link, in fact), and as I mentioned, it connects just fine. Other computers are able to connect, as well, though I haven't tried installing Dreamweaver on another computer yet. I'll try that from work today.

Maybe this is the final motivation I need to buy OS X 10.4 and start with a fresh install.
posted by Acetylene at 6:47 AM on December 8, 2005

Maybe try to log in to OS X with a different username.
posted by Sharcho at 5:24 PM on December 9, 2005