Why does ftp segmentation fault after a transfer completes?


You may see the following problem occur with ftp.

	$ ftp sysa                                            
	Connected to sysa.                                                    
	220 sysa FTP server (Version 5.3 Wed Apr 1 14:06:38 EST 1998) ready.  
	Name (sysa:user):                                                  
	331 Password required for user.                                      
	Password:                                                               
	230 User user logged in.                                             
	Remote system type is UNIX.                                             
	Using binary mode to transfer files.                                    
	ftp> get xfertest /tmp/xfertest                                       
	200 PORT command successful.                                            
	150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for xfertest (204 bytes).      
	226 Transfer complete.                                                  
	Segmentation fault (core dumped)                                        
	$

The problem is caused because ftp was compiled for lightning floating point.
Systems which do not have a lightning floating point co-processor will exhibit
this symptom.  If your system behaves like this you can download a non-lightning floating point version of ftp here:
ftp://ftp.ccur.com/pub/public/RT-6000_ftp.