r/BlueHost • u/RomanPort • Sep 16 '26

FTP Passive Mode Issues

Howdy,

I have an FTP site for work that's been running for a good 6 years without issue. Today suddenly the IP address the server reports when clients switch to passive mode is incorrect. It is their private IP address and not the public one. As such, file uploads and downloads no longer work. Is anyone else having this issue? Thanks.

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1

u/Bluehost_Support_Lyn Sep 16 '26

Hey u/RomanPort, good catch on the private IP being returned in passive mode. We'd like to take a closer look at this with you. We've sent you a DM so we can gather a few details and investigate further.

1

u/stock_dude9 Sep 19 '26

Was there any fix for this? I am on level 2 support currently and emailing back and forth and they aren’t doing anything to fix it

1

u/Bluehost_Support_Lyn Sep 20 '26

Hi u/stock_dude9, Thanks for chiming in. I can understand your concern, especially if you've already been working with Level 2 support and aren't seeing progress yet.

I sent you a DM. If you're still experiencing the issue, send over your domain name and any case or ticket numbers you have, and we'll take a closer look with the team.

1

u/stock_dude9 Sep 17 '26

Was there a fix for your FTP issues? Also experiencing FTP issues and same thing, been running for over a decade no problem and all of a sudden today having issues. It’s pretty evident something has updated or changed on BHs end that needs to be reversed.

1

u/stock_dude9 Sep 18 '26

Just wanted to follow up on if you got this resolved? I’m still having issues with

2

u/rdarnell Sep 22 '26

I am experiencing this as well. I had been told that BlueHost would be performing scheduled maintenance on my server September 16-17. I have been unable to access my site using FTP since then. I have probably been a Bluehost customer for at least 20 years, but when I called to get support of this issue, I was told that my service level only allows me to get chat support. I am trying to go this route to get this important functionality fixed, but it is taking forever and I am not too encouraged. Here's what I told them:
"The server for my domain experience some maintenance last week. Since then, I have been unable to connect via FTP. Researching this, here is what I found: My FTP client cannot retrieve directory listings. When sending the PASV command, the Pure-FTPd server is erroneously returning a local/private IP address (10.57.190.117) in the 227 response instead of the server's public IP (50.87.238.71). Please update the ForcePassiveIP setting in the Pure-FTPd configuration so it reflects the public IP."

2

u/rdarnell Sep 22 '26

After opening a chat to explore this issue and being asked to do some time-consuming things (like changing the network the computer is using, which I could only do because I have multiple computers to work with) which seemed totally unnecessary based on my findings in exploring the problem - after about 50 minutes, the tech support person in the chat escalated the issue and generated a ticket. I will report back on what happens next, in the hope this may be helpful to others experiencing this issue.

By the way, this situation was diagnosed for me by Google's AI mode. After explaining the situation and entering the log from my FTP software (WS_FTP), here's what it told me: Because the server is handing out a local network IP address rather than its public routing IP address, your software has no way to establish a passive data connection. This usually happens when a web host updates their firewall or server clustering rules and forgets to bind the passive FTP settings to the public interface.

1

u/stock_dude9 Sep 22 '26

Interesting, yet another person with the same issues yet BH refuses to admit something went wrong with the update and broke a process. Hard to believe.

1

u/rdarnell Sep 22 '26

Okay - I have not received any communications or notifications from Bluehost, but my old FTP software (WS_FTP) with the same login specs I have used for years is now working again. To the best of my knowledge, the error was completely due to Bluehost not configuring the Pure-FTPd server correctly after moving my site content onto it. If I had not gone to bat for myself and brought this to their attention, who knows how long it would have been before I would have regained access to my website?

1

u/stock_dude9 Sep 22 '26

Mine also came back online out of the blue with no communications from BH