Xlight FTP Server

[Ogglord]

This is a great ftp server which I have been using for several months. I would consider it portable, tho I have not done any monitoring of the registry etc.
It is downloadable as a single exe and will create settings files in its directory.

I think it will make a great contribution to the site.

Xlight FTP Server has three editions: personal, standard, professional. Personal edition is free for personal use.

After 30 days- it will become stripped of some extra features but still very competetive.

Screenshot
Screenshot
Website

[webfork]

I really, really want to get a simple SFTP server here on the site so I took a look at this program. The irony is that the program is (so far) portable until you generate a cert. I say "so far" because I haven't tested it past the 30 day point, whereupon its behavior may change.

Otherwise, it writes one entry to "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID" which is no biggie.

Tested: Portable (tentatively and if you don't generate an SFTP cert)

Edit:

Additional notes:

1. Saves passwords securely (good)
2. Program updated very recently (very good, compared to many other FTP server tools available on the site)
3. Test system was a stripped-down WinXP SP2

Update:

The developers replied:

• "We use the Windows’s native CryptoAPI for SSL. If certificate is stored in the disk, it can be easily copied and less secure. For security reason, Microsoft chooses to store SSL certificate in the registry, which seems not possible to change."

Two points here:

• 1. The program does NOT use SSH and instead is another FTP over SSL tool, which strictly speaking is FTPS, not SFTP.
  2. Still, the program is useful and simple and presumably you could generate a cert anywhere you go.

Should this program be added?

[smaragdus]

I tested Xlight FTP Server version 3.8.5.1 for a while and I liked it- tiny, relatively light on resources (but heavier than Home FTP Server) , easy to set-up. The differences between Xlight FTP Server editions (Personal, Standard and Professional) can be found below:

http://www.xlightftpd.com/purchase.htm
http://www.xftpserver.com/purchase.htm

The SFTP add-on is not included in the freeware edition (in fact it is sold separately and is not included in the other two editions either). Another feature the free editions lacks is logging of transfers. The GUI could be better and in fact it is not configurable, the program doesn't even remember its desktop position after restart.

In my opinion even the limited free edition of Xlight FTP Server can be useful for home users- 5 simultaneously connected users is not an extremely severe limitation- other commercial FTP servers allow only 1 connected user at a time in their free versions.

[smaragdus]

My initial enthusiasm about Xlight FTP Server waned- it seems that it has a major problem- no Unicode support. Perhaps I am missing something but I was not able to open directories containing Unicode characters (for example ñ) and I am sure the problem is not caused by my FTP client since it opens without problems the same directories when I use my other FTP server (Home FTP Server). Checking 'Enable UTF8 Encoding' doesn't help:

I need that someone confirms this Unicode problem.

[freakazoid]

smaragdus - I haven't tried Xlight, but have you looked at the FTP servers we have on TPFC?
http://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?sc=92

One of them will probably support unicode.

[smaragdus]

@freakazoid
Thanks for the suggestion but these FTP servers aren't of great quality- limited features and abandoned long time ago. With its nag-screen Serva is totally useless for me. There has never been an overabundance of free FTP servers- I have used the last free version of Cerberus FTP Server (2.46), BlackMoon FTP Server (web-site offline), Home FTP Server (web-site offline) and FileZilla Server. None of them is to my liking but I still prefer Home FTP Server (not portable). Even with its limitations Xlight FTP Server would be OK if it was able to handle Unicode.