The Dreamweaver configuration documentation for “Secure FTP” is poor to non-existant. I am not talking about how to check Dreamweaver’s “Use Secure FTP (SFTP)” checkbox (which is trivial, but for which there is LOTS of documentation), but rather how to set up your secure server to receive the Secure FTP communication from Dreamweaver.
The trick is that Dreamweaver’s “Secure FTP” is not FTP! It is ssh! It runs on port 22, which is not configurable (within Dreamweaver, as of CS3).
So, for all of us who have wasted hours setting up an ftp server, and trying to figure out why Dreamweaver wouldn’t connect through the firewall, now you know!
You just have to set up sshd to receive connections on port 22, and don’t waste your time with vsftpd!
When configured properly, the (Ubuntu) /var/log/auth.log will report the connection via sshd, and sshd will report “subsystem request for sftp”. sftp is an ftp-like program that runs under and through ssh. You can read more about the sftp client via Linux “man sftp”. You can use the sftp client to connect between Linux computers to transfer files over ssh like you would use ftp, but with no need to set up an ftp server (again, sftp uses the sshd server).