10.11. How do I tell ``make fetch'' to do passive FTP?

This depends on which utility is used to retrieve distfiles. From bsd.pkg.mk, FETCH_CMD is assigned the first available command from the following list:

/usr/bin/fetch
${LOCALBASE}/bsd/bin/ftp
/usr/bin/ftp
  

On a default NetBSD install, this will be /usr/bin/ftp, which automatically tries passive connections first, and falls back to active connections if the server refuses to do passive. For the other tools, add the following to your /etc/mk.conf file:

	PASSIVE_FETCH=1
  

Having that option present will prevent /usr/bin/ftp from falling back to active transfers.