Unrecognized characters after uploading file

[Lautaro Lacurcia]

Hi,

I've been using FileZilla for years now but lately I have to move to another FTP Client due to some issues I'm having.

FileZilla version: 3.3.5.1.
Processor: AMD Phenom 8450 Triple-Core Processor 2.10 GHz
RAM: 2GB
System:Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bits.

I am a freelancer, web developer, basically using Flash, PHP and MySql.
Daily, I need to upload/download files from my Server or my Clients.

After testing my applications in my local environment I upload it to my Server for a remote testing and allowing my Clients check work evolution and suggest corrections, changes, etc.

Since last week I started to have issues after uploading files to my Server:

a) although all files were uploaded properly, with no error messages and all of them being in its proper folder, application refused to work as it was working in my local environment.

b) I observed that some files were having different size in my disk than in my Server. Since I have moved recently to a new WebHosting (Linux) I thought this could be due to a different method Linux had to calculate the space on disk, I don't know.

c) some files, although displaying the same size in my disk than in my Server what lead to think it had been properly uploaded, when testing they refused to be loaded. This was easily detected with Flash movies (most of them forms) and graphics, simple graphics like backgrounds or headers (.png and .jpg). All of them small to middle file sizes (2KB - 200KB). FileZilla showed the files were in their proper folder, Server's FileManager application also showed that the file was in its proper location, Browser's "Source View" feature showed that the file/s were been called at the right places but the file/s didn't show up in the browser.

d) Tracking the application step by step (logically, not with a debugger because the app was not able to start the debugger, the application didn't start at all!) I could detect that some text files were having weird content merged with the actual content (attached you will find one of the files snapshot).
I really cannot say about other files content (like Flash or graphic files) since I'm not able to read their contents as one can do with a text file. But those text files, definitely had a different content than its corresponding in my local environment.

e) trying to upload those files once and again (using auto, ASCII or binary) did not show any change: always the same weird content merged with the actual content (black diamonds with a question mark inside).

I talked to my Server's support staff (InMotion) and they could not explain me what could this be due to. And I can't remember where these guys or IXWebHosting support guys (my former Server) that suggested this could be due to a FileZilla misfunction.
I refused to accept their suggestion but, just in case, I downloaded another free FTP Client (Core FTP Lite) and the same files and directories were uploaded once again with successful results: no file was missing, no size was different and all files content (texts, graphics, flash, databases, etc) were exactly the same than in my local environment.

I have been searching in previous reports of similar issues and couldn't find any similar to mine; then, I cannot understand what weird configuration should I have that may be causing this deformation.

Since I love FileZilla, I feel very confident with it and very familiar with all its features after using it for so many years, I feel very extrange using any other FTP Client and would like to return to use FileZilla as I used to in the past.

I would appreciate any suggestion/s you could give me and if you need further explanation, questions or whatever, please, do not hesitate to let me know.

Best regards,
Lautaro.

[Lautaro Lacurcia]

Snapshots of Text Files showing merged weird characters.

[Alexander Schuch]

Telling from the screenshot you provided, this does not look like a bug in FileZilla - it looks like you have character set or character encoding problems.

Please make sure you are using the VERY SAME character set and character encoding in all of your applications and editors. If you do not use US-ASCII as character set with 7-bit encoding, please transfer files only using binary mode.

As a rough guess, you are using Unicode in UTF-16 on Windows, but an 8-bit encoding in cPanel (ansi_x3).

Please re-open this issue if this problem persists and you double checked that character set and encoding are the very same on all involved applications.

[Lautaro Lacurcia]

Hi ci-dev!

Thanks for your reply.

I do not have those files any more and my environment is not the same as it used to be at that time, so, i can not re-do the tests.
I remember in that moment, when the issue arise, I used Core FTP Lite to allow me uploading those files without any problem at all.

I'm currently using Dreamweaver to edit my Text, PHP and HTML files and returned to use FileZilla again (fortunately) and I'm having no issues of any kind.
Probably, as you suggested, the issue was due to some conflicting configurations.

Thanks for your time and interest.

Best regards,
Lautaro.