Are there any full featured console (command line) ftp clients?
I'm moving parts of a website from one host to another. One server has ssh shell access (and thus scp, sftp, etc.), the other only ftp.
My home computer is an Ubuntu desktop. What I have been doing till now is using Filezilla to download to my desktop, and then uploading to the new server from there. This is slow and inefficient, everything is transferred twice and my home network speed is limited, and has a monthly bandwidth quota besides. The two servers have a fast connection between them though. I'd rather just ssh into one server and retrieve the files I need directly.
So what I'm looking for a console ftp client which has feature set similar to Filezilla (I need to pick and choose what to transfer and what to leave behind). Does such a creature exist?
34 Answers
To my mind, the most powerful command-line ftp client is undoubtly lftp.
- it allows one to use standard shell command over the ftp wire
- It provides up/down queue for long operations
Check if Midnight Commander (mc) is installed. If so, you can do ftp from there.
You could make life really easy for yourself using a fuse filessytem.
On the machine you can ssh into, install curlftpfs
sudo apt-get install curlftpfsThen add yourself to group fuse
sudo usermod -aG fuse <username>Log out, and log back in again, for changes to take effect.
Make a directory for a mount point
mkdir ~/ftpThen mount the ftp server as a local filesystem
curlftpfs ftp.server.com ~/ftp -o user=<ftp_username>Enter the password when prompted.
You can then use the remote ftp servers files as if they appear on the local server. Allowing you to use cp, rsync etc without the hassle of handling ftp.
Read the man page for more information
Especially useful if you do a lot of this sort of thing.
1Just in case anyone still needs this :)
I was able to transfer a large website from a linux VM (from the SSH command line) to the Azure website cloud service DIRECTLY (via ftp) by using the ncftp client as guided here
Finally, remember to remove the ftp client from your vm afterwards.
cheers.
