Dahua FTP problems

This is a subject which has been discussed many times here and in other forums. The problem I'm having is that when I attempt to use FTP to upload video clips and jpegs to a server, the result is a set of empty folders. I have had the same results when using an FTP server setup on a Raspberry Pi or one setup on my Macbook. I'm pretty sure that the problem is the firmware in the Dahua camera. In my case that camera is an IPC-HFW-2100.

The FTP server on the Raspberry Pi can be made to generate a nice log file that seems to show that the camera is failing because it can't delete certain files. Here is an excerpt from that log file:

Mon Oct 5 10:28:54 2015 [pid 1113] [camera] FAIL DELETE: Client "::ffff:192.168.0.101", "/Motion/WIIR210T_D01072/2015-10-05/001/dav/10/10.28.49-10.28.49[R][0@0][0].idx_"

Mon Oct 5 10:28:54 2015 [pid 1113] [camera] FAIL DELETE: Client "::ffff:192.168.0.101", "/mnt/shares/ftp/Motion/WIIR210T_D01072/2015-10-05/001/dav/10/10.28.49-10.28.49[R][0@0][0].idx_"

It first attempts to delete an ".idx_" file from a folder rooted at "/" and then at the same file rooted at "/mnt/shares/ftp". In neither case does the file exist and when the delete fails, the camera quits. The log shows the camera issuing a series of "mkdir" commands to make the directory structure that the ".dav" and ".jpg" files should be put into, but that is never even attempted.

I've tried this with several different versions of the firmware. In no case does it actually work. Here are a couple of the versions that I have tried:

General_IPC-HX3(2)XXX_Eng_N_V2.210.0001.0.R.20130517.bin

General_IPC-HX3(2)XXX_Eng_N_V2.420.0000.0.R.20140414.bin

In each case I have done a hard reset after "upgrading" to that firmware version.

I'm stumped...

BTW, I like the 20140414 version because it seems to support writing directly to a NAS. I think that it is looking for an NFS server, but I have not been able to get that working either. I would rather use the NAS. FTP is a security nightmare.

Help!

I seem to remember having an issue like this on my Windows 7 PC. Ultimately, the system (user name) itself did not have full control permissions over the directory, so regardless of what the FTP commands were attempting to do, the system could not create or delete folders/files. Once I gave the gave the system full control in the security properties, which was a lengthy process, the FTP began working properly.