FTP in Mac OS X Lion

With the release of their latest OS, Lion, Apple dropped support for FTP activation via System Preferences → Sharing. As all my wordpress developments are tested locally on a MacBook Pro, I needed to have a way to use FTP for remote plugin installation or system upgrades. It seems that even if FTP activation is no longer supported via System Preferences, the launchctl daemon can be used to manually activate the FTP service via terminal.

Simply enter the following command:

sudo -s launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist

Be advised, the service won’t stop as you close the computer. You have to manually disable by:

sudo -s launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist

Just a quick and simple solution.

Oh, and more info on launchctl can be found here.