FTP HOWTO FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is a client/server tcp protocol that allows a user to transfer files to and from a remote network site. An FTP site is a computer that is running FTP server software. An FTP client is the userland application that provides access to FTP servers. There are many FTP clients available. Some are graphical, some are text-based. The standard ftp program is the original ftp client. It comes standard with most Linux distributions. It first appeared in 4.2BSD, which was developed by the University of California, Berkeley. It's easy to use ftp. Let's say you want to connect to the anonymous ftp site metalab.unc.edu, to download the latest Linux kernel source. At the command line, type: $ ftp metalab.unc.edu The ftp program will attempt to connect to metalab.unc.edu. When it succeeds, it will ask you for a login: 220 helios.oit.unc.edu FTP server (Version wu-2.6.0(2) Wed Nov 17 14:44:12 EST 1999) ready. Name (metalab.unc.edu:mkb): We log in as anonymous or ftp, to get to the public archive. 331 Guest login ok, send your complete e-mail address as password. Password: We now enter a complete e-mail address as the password. After ftp has a successful login, the following information is given to us: Remote system type is UNIX. Using binary mode to transfer files. ftp> Note that the file transfer type is binary. Binary mode transfers the files, bit by bit, as they are on the FTP server. Ascii mode, however, will download the text directly. You can type ascii or binary to switch between the types. You want to download the kernel source, so you leave the file transfer type at binary. You do an ls to see a list of the files: ftp> ls 200 PORT command successful. 150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls. total 33590 -r--r--r-- 1 root other 34348506 Dec 03 03:53 IAFA-LISTINGS lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 7 Jul 15 1997 README -> WELCOME -rw-r--r-- 1 root other 890 Nov 15 13:11 WELCOME dr-xr-xr-x 2 root other 512 Jul 15 1997 bin dr-xr-xr-x 2 root other 512 Jul 15 1997 dev dr-xr-xr-x 2 root other 512 Jul 18 1997 etc drwxrwxrwx 11 ftp 20 4608 Nov 28 16:00 incoming lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 13 Jun 04 1998 ls-lR -> IAFA-LISTINGS dr-xr-xr-x 17 root root 512 Jun 08 11:43 pub dr-xr-xr-x 3 root other 512 Jul 15 1997 unc dr-xr-xr-x 5 root other 512 Jul 15 1997 usr 226 Transfer complete. You know that the kernel sources are in the directory /pub/Linux/kernel, so you type the following to get into that directory: ftp> cd pub/Linux/kernel 250-README for kernel 250- 250-What you'll find here: kernel sources and patches 250- 250- 250 CWD command successful. The messages you see, which begin with "250", are information messages sent by the server. In this case, the ftp server is configured to automatically send you the README file when you cd into the directory. Now, after doing another ls, you see that you want to cd into the v2.2 directory. You do yet another ls, and find the file you want to download. It is linux-2.2.13.tar.gz. So you type this: ftp> get linux-2.2.13.tar.gz local: linux-2.2.13.tar.gz remote: linux-2.2.13.tar.gz 200 PORT command successful. 150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for linux-2.2.13.tar.gz (15079540 bytes). The ftp program has started saving the remote file linux-2.2.13.tar.gz as the local file linux-2.2.13.tar.gz. If you wanted to save it as the local file "foo.tar.gz", you could have specified it like this: ftp> get linux-2.2.13.tar.gz foo.tar.gz local: foo.tar.gz remote: linux-2.2.13.tar.gz 200 PORT command successful. 150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for linux-2.2.13.tar.gz (15079540 bytes). If you want to download more than one file at a time, you'd have to use the mget command. You can use mget together with a space-delimited list of filenames you want to get, or you can use wildcards with the mget command. For example: ftp> mget linux* Would get all files starting with the string "linux". Normally, mget will prompt you for each file before it downloads it. You can toggle this by using the prompt command. Now, wouldn't it be nice if you could watch the progress while you're downloading a file with ftp? You can use the hash command to print out hash marks as you download a file: ftp> hash Hash mark printing on (1024 bytes/hash mark). As you can tell, ftp will print a hash mark for every 1024 bytes of data you download. There is also a tick option. ftp> tick Tick counter printing on (10240 bytes/tick increment). This will print something to this effect as you download a file: Bytes transferred: 11680 Now let's say you've written a piece of software, and you want to upload it to MetaLab to be included in their Linux software archive. First, you'd change to the /incoming directory, then you'd use the put command: ftp> put foo.tar.gz local: foo.tar.gz remote: foo.tar.gz 200 PORT command successful. 150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for foo.tar.gz. 226 Transfer complete. 10257 bytes sent in 0.00316 secs (3.2e+03 Kbytes/sec) The put command works the same way as the get command, so you can use mput to upload multiple files at the same time. You can also upload a local file with a different filename on the server by specifying the remote filename as an argument. What if the file foo.tar.gz is not in your current local directory when you try to upload it? You can switch local directories by using the lcd command: ftp> lcd /home/foo/ Local directory now /home/foo The ftp client also supports using the ! to run local commands. For example, to get a listing of files in your current local directory, do this: ftp> !ls The way this works is that ftp calls the local ls program to give you the listing. You can run any local command via the ftp program simply by prepending a "!" to it. There are many other ftp commands. You can make a directory on the remote server using the mkdir command. You can remove a file on the remote server using the delete command, or rmdir to remove a directory. You can also change file permissions using the chmod command. For more complete information on using ftp, please see the online help in the ftp program (accessible by typing help with no arguments for a list of commands, or help for specific help on a command). You can also read the Unix man page for ftp by typing: $ man ftp at your command prompt. Enhanced FTP client programs ---------------------------- The original ftp program was the original ftp client, and it is the only ftp client that you can be certain is available on most systems (even Win32 comes with the ftp command, albeit an archaic, braindead version of it). Many enterprising programmers have written ftp clients that offer greater ease of use and more advanced features such as site bookmarks, queueing of files to download/upload, etc. There even exist some graphical FTP clients for use with the X Window system. NcFTP ----- NcFTP is the all-time favorite ftp client of many Unix users. It comes bundled with most Linux distributions, and offers many advanced features. Version 2 of NcFTP had a curses based full-screen mode. This was done away with in Version 3 (now in beta). At first glance, NcFTP seems a lot like the stock ftp client. But it has command line tab-completion, bookmarks. It's not 100% compatible with the commands that standard ftp uses. For example, get and put act like mget and mput do in standard ftp. So if you want to save a remote file as a different local filename, you'd do get -z remotename localname. Thankfully, NcFTP has a nice online help system to assist you in learning the commands. You can get the latest version of NcFTP at http://www.ncftp.com