This is mostly used to copy files between computers. It doesn’t support compression. It is also not encrypted. This is how to transfer files.
To connect to foo.com
ftp foo.com
You will have to enter your username and password when prompted.
If the file being transferred is a binary file (yes, PDF and PS are binary files), type the following.
binary
To upload your file wolf.pdf to the directory in foo.com
cd /home/arul/backup put wolf.pdf
To download the file arul.ps from the directory in foo.com
get arul.ps
If you have multiple files, use mget
instead of get
and mput
instead of put
.
To quit, type bye
. This is just the basic file transfer using FTP. To check all the options using FTP, typeman ftp
from your shell prompt.
SFTP (secure file transfer protocol)
SFTP is an interactive file transfer program, similar to FTP, which performs all operations over an encrypted secsh transport. If you are a Windows user, you will need a secure file transfer program likeWinSCP program.
To connect to foo.com here is what you should do.
sftp foo.com
You will have to enter your username and password when prompted.
To upload your file wolf.pdf to the directory in foo.com
cd /home/arul/backup put wolf.pdf
To download the file arul.ps from the directory in foo.com
get arul.ps
If you want to download multiple files, say all PDF files,
get *.pdf
To quit, type exit
. This is just the basic SFTP. To check all the options using SFTP, type man sftp
from your shell prompt.
SCP (secure copy)
SCP is used for single file transfers unlike SFTP or FTP, where once connected, you can carry out any number of transfers.
To upload the file wolf.pdf to the /home/arul/backup in the remote computer foo.com here is what you should do. Lets say the username and password for connecting to foo.com are us3r and p4sswordrespectively, read ahead.
scp wolf.pdf us3r@foo.com:/home/arul/backup/
You will be prompted for your password, which you should enter. It uploads the file and quits automatically.. all in one operation.
To download the file arul.ps from the remote directory, here is what you must do.
scp us3r@foo.com:/home/arul/backup/arul.ps
If you want to upload the entire perl directory (recursively) here is what you do.
scp -r /home/wolf/perl us3r@foo.com:/home/arul/backup/
wget
To download the index.html page of gnome.org, here is what you type.
wget http://www.gnome.org/index.html
… and you have the index.html page on your current directory 🙂
If you want to rip the website upto 3 levels,
wget -r -l 3 http://www.gnome.org
Shell Script to automate upload using FTP
I wrote this simple shell script to automate upload and download of files.. just customise it according to your use.
#!/bin/bash HOST='foo.com' USER='us3r' PASSWD='p4ssword' ftp -i -n $HOST <<Arul user ${USER} ${PASSWD} binary cd /home/arul/backup put wolf.pdf get arul.ps quit Arul
Do you know of any standalone antivirus and anti-spyware program that work well together. It seems like most corporations are trying to combine each into one item and to me personally it seems like one is often sacrificed. I’d rather run two good software products that function effectively together.