Upgrade To New Version Wiped All Site Information

[gord323]

I'm usually wary of upgrades when there's no need. But today I was so tired of seeing the upgrade nag screen that I went and upgraded to the latest version. After all, what could go wrong?

On starting up the file manager I find that all my site information had been wiped. (That's such a brilliant move!) I am left with nothing. See attached screenshot. No host, no user, no password, etc.

So I'm wondering, does Filezilla save this data anywhere?

I have read the FAQs which make reference to the %APPDATA% directory. But I've searched for that and cannot find it on my Windows 10 pc.

Anyone know what I should do next?

The path of the data I need would be incredibly useful at this time, thanks.

[botg]

Updating doesn't wipe sites. Are you by chance running FileZilla under a different user account?

[gord323]

Thanks, botg,

Not to my knowledge. I've only ever had one user account with this FTP client.

The FAQs seem to suggest that the "lost" data may be found stored somewhere in the %APPDATA% folder. But so far I haven't been able to find this. (Windows loves hiding things when you want to find them.)

[boco]

APPDATA is hidden.

Just open an Explorer window, type %APPDATA% into the address field and press RETURN. Should bring you straight there. The FileZilla directory is there.

[gord323]

Right, thanks for that.

I have several XML files in the Filezilla directory. I'm having a look at a file called filezilla.xml and towards the end there is a collection of data which looks like settings in the file manager (Host IP address, port, password, etc.).

But I've entered these and I got an error message:

Error: Cannot establish FTP connection to an SFTP server. Please select proper protocol.
Error: Critical error: Could not connect to server

[gord323]

I just had a word with the host, Vultr.

"We cannot provide support for Site Manager or Filezilla", they replied.

So it looks as if I need to speak to the developer(s) of Filezilla.

[gord323]

So can anyone tell me why the data that I have in my filezilla.xml file produces an error message?

[boco]

Site Manager data is in Sitemanager.xml, not in FileZilla.xml.

Data loss could only occur with malformed XML. But, that's true for every other application using XML files, as well.

Malformed XML can happen with on-access virus scanners preventing the correct writing of the file (truncation). It's also possible that shutting down the OS without closing FileZilla first will prevent proper saving of the configs. Hard- and software faults are the third case where the configs could get corrupted.

If you open the sitemanager.xml with a good text editor, is your data there?

[gord323]

So I should look in the sitemanager.xml file and not the filezilla.xml file. OK, good to know that.

The sitemanager.xml file seems to open normally and I can see two sets of data, each opening and closing with the <server> and </server> tags.

Both these "paragpraphs" contain largely similar data except the passwords are different.

Filezilla would have been closed before any OS shutdown, as it is not my regular FTP client (but for some reason I could not get my Globalscape CuteFTP to work with my Vultr host, possibly because my Vultr host refused to provide any support). So everything should have been saved properly.

There's nothing to indicate a malformed XML: it starts with a <?xml version="1.0"?> declaration and ends with </FileZilla3>.

So I'll try with the possible permutations in these two new data sets. Now at least I know that the port should be 22.

It complained that "Cannot establish FTP connection to an SFTP server." So presumably that means that I MUST use the SFTP protocol.

But after trying everything I can think of it still fails.

[gord323]

The output I'm getting at this stage is:

Status: Connection established, waiting for welcome message...
Status: Initializing TLS...
Status: Verifying certificate...
Status: TLS connection established.
Command: USER gordgood
Response: 331 User gordgood OK. Password required
Command: PASS ************
Response: 530 Login authentication failed
Error: Critical error: Could not connect to server

It would greatly help if I knew if I should be using the upper set of data in the sitemanager.xml file, or the lower set of data.

I also have a file called recentservers.xml. Should I completely ignore that?

Should the host be an alphanumeric domain name or an IP address number?

What should the port number REALLY be?

Should the user REALLY be 'root' or is it just saying that (for some reason)?

[boco]

Before doing anything, make a copy of the whole directory! You can try to re-import the data by using menu File - Import... and point FileZilla to the copied sitemanager.xml (not to the original one).

Nothing of that data is in any way pre-configured, everything was stored by yourself (or another user). All personal setup.

It would greatly help if I knew if I should be using the upper set of data in the sitemanager.xml file, or the lower set of data.

The <Server></Server> blocks are the actual entries. No idea why they don't load.
Note that <Protocol>0</Protocol> is FTP, 1 is SFTP.

I also have a file called recentservers.xml. Should I completely ignore that?

recentservers.xml stores the last server you have connected to, for the "Reconnect" feature (R button in the toolbar).

Should the host be an alphanumeric domain name or an IP address number?

Doesn't matter, Hostname could be both. URL will be resolved into the IP(s), IP will be used directly. Btw, IPv6 addresses are alphanumeric, too.

What should the port number REALLY be?

That's up to the server administrator. There are a few default ports reserved for the protocols (21/990 for FTP(S), 22 for SFTP), but they are not mandatory. If FileZilla doesn't show any port, it is using the default one.

Should the user REALLY be 'root' or is it just saying that (for some reason)?

Same, account details completely up to the server admin. "root" would be highly unusual for a normal FTP account, however.

[gord323]

That was helpful, thanks.

I tried using the settings in the recentservers.xml file and I believe I nearly got there.

Here is the output:

Status: Connecting to 192.254.235.45:21...
Status: Connection established, waiting for welcome message...
Status: Initializing TLS...
Status: Verifying certificate...
Status: TLS connection established.
Command: USER gordgood
Response: 331 User gordgood OK. Password required
Command: PASS ****************
Response: 530 Login authentication failed
Error: Critical error: Could not connect to server


If these settings worked for the last session I don't know why they don't work now.

I have put this question to my host, Vultr.

In the meantime, is there anything obvious from the oputput why this isn't working now?

[gord323]

I've seen the information on Vultr.

The password is different from any of the passwords in any of the files in the Filezilla folder in APPDATA.

User name is listed as 'root'

Again, I've tried all the permutations that I can and nothing works.

[gord323]

Aha.

Finally changing the port to 22 did it, and I've connected.

Thanks very much to those who helped, especially boco.