If you want to enable ftpd immediately without downloading or installing any scripts or apps, simply enter: But if you need FTP and are aware of the risks, now you have the option of enabling it when needed. You can enable SFTP and SSH in Lion (and previous versions of OS X) by going to System Preferences » Sharing and making sure that 'Remote Login' is enabled. The only time FTP should be used is when there is no chance of the password being 'sniffed' by a nefarious third party. Once again I repeat: if you are trying to connect to another machine over the Internet in an otherwise unencrypted manner, use SFTP. Using the Terminal is one option, but it's not the only option.) (If any part of that previous sentence didn't make sense to you, I recommend using one of the GUI programs listed above. To use the script, download ftpd.sh and then put it somewhere in your $PATH such as /usr/local/bin and make sure it is executable chmod 755 /path/to/ftpd.sh. It is also smart enough not to try to turn it on when it is already on, or off when it is already off. The script must be run as root, but if it isn't, it will automatically re-launch itself using 'sudo' rather than failing ungracefully. My script is based on Daniel Smith's launchd commands mentioned above. #1 will turn it on, #2 will turn it off, #3 will show you whether it is currently on or off. I wrote a small shell script called ftpd which will let you turn ftpd on or off, or check its current status.

FTPD Enable App which is an AppleScript app to launch ftpdįor those of us who prefer the command line, there are even instructions on how to enable ftpd using launchd.

Lion Tweaks (which also lets you toggle other Lion settings).

The even better news is that there are (at least) two GUI tools for re-enabling it: The good news is that Apple did not remove the FTP server ( /usr/libexec/ftpd) from Lion, they only removed the GUI to enable or disable it. I'm also willing to admit that there may not be much practical difference in most cases - that is, I don't know that SFTP is much slower than FTP, but when you're talking about '8 GB at a time' transfers, every little bit matters.

Personally, I prefer FTP on my LAN because, since it is unencrypted, there's no extra processing time needed to encrypt and decrypt the transfer. Others have mentioned that they have some devices which only support FTP so SFTP isn't an option. I do this all the time when transferring DVD rips from one machine to another.

For instance, transferring large files over your own LAN. However, there are some cases when using FTP is perfectly fine. No one should be using FTP over the Internet. Generally speaking, that's not a bad move, because most times SFTP is available anywhere FTP is, and SFTP is far superior in terms of security. Apple decided to remove the GUI for enabling and disabling FTP from Mac OS X Lion.

Macos ftp server