FTP error: not a plain file is an error message that is normally triggered while transferring folders directly via FTP.

As a part of our Server Management Services, we help webmasters, web hosts, and online service providers to fix similar FTP errors.

Today lets discuss the top reasons for the not a plain file error and its fixes.

What is FTP error not a plain file?

The FTP error not a plain file is generally triggered while transferring files through-plane FTP method. Primitive FTP tools are designed to transfer single files. However, in most cases, users need to transfer more than a single file. They may need to transfer folders, package files, or much more. This, in turn, triggers the not a plain file error.

A typical error  message looks like:

The two major reasons behind this error message are the transfer of folders and the permission of the file. Let us look at each of these reasons in detail and the tips to fix each of them.

Permission of the file

One of the possible reasons for this error is the permission of the file. Everyone should have read permission to the file for the transfer to succeed. The LIST command or the ls -al command can be used to get a list of files along with their permission. For instance, a sample result for the ls -al command would be:

rwxr-xr-- 2 user group 4096 Jan 20 2019 www.example.com
rwxr-x--- 3 user group 4096 Jun 15 23:18 www.example.au
rwxr-x--- 3 user group 4096 May 20 00:54 www.one-example.com

The file www.example.com allows read permission to everyone whereas it not so with www.example.au and www.one-example.com. Thus downloading www.example.au or www.one-example.com may lead to not a plain file error.

The fix here would be to correct the permission of the file through a chmod command after getting into the server via SSH.

Transferring folders

This error message most commonly occurs when a folder is tried to transfer via FTP. By default, the primitive FTP tools allow only the transfer of regular files. However, we could easily transfer folders through FTP. Let’s discuss some tips for them.

Transferring contents from a single folder

If the transfer is of a single folder and it does not contain any other folders inside it, the simplest method to perform this using primitive FTP tools would be to recreate the folder at the destination end and then transferring the contents to it. For instance to transfer a folder named “test ” with following regular files,

ls -al test
-rw-r--r-- 1 test test 0 Dec 20 2015 example.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 test test 0 Dec 20 2015 exam.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 test test 53 Jan 15 2019 test.txt

Firstly, we need to create the folder at the destination server using the mkdir command. Next, we can enter into the “test” folder in the source FTP server with the “cd” command. Finally, all the files in the folder can be transferred with a single FTP command like

mget *

Transferring a zip file

It may not be possible for the folders to contain only plain files every time. In most of the cases, users may need to transfer folders recursively. Creating each folder at the destination end manually and then transferring them will be difficult, particularly during the transfer of entire website files.

The widely used method here would be to generate a zip file of the entire folder and then transferring it.

Using FTP clients

The easiest of all the methods to transfer folders is to use any of the FTP clients. They provide a graphical user interface for file transfer which makes them easy to use for all. Most of the clients like Filezilla provide the option to drag and drop, ie, folders could be transferred with just drawing the folder and dropping them in the required destination.

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Conclusion

In short, FTP error not a plain file is a generic error message that is normally triggered while transferring folders directly via FTP. It can also happen due to incorrect file permissions. Today we discussed some tips followed by our Support Engineers to transfer files in spite of the not a plain file error.