How to use rsync over FTP

rsync isn't going to work for you for the reasons others have mentioned. However, lftp and ncftp both have "mirror" modes that will probably meet your needs.

I use this to push stuff from my local directory to a ftp or sftp web host:

lftp -c "set ftp:list-options -a;
open ftp://user:[email protected]; 
lcd ./web;
cd /web/public_html;
mirror --reverse --delete --use-cache --verbose --allow-chown  
--allow-suid --no-umask --parallel=2 --exclude-glob .svn"

As written by easel, lftp is a good tool.

I suggest you to parametrize the script, and make use of the

exclude-glob

options, that excludes filenames using the glob feature (*,? ..) of your shell:

#!/bin/bash    
HOST="your.ftp.host.dom"
USER="username"
PASS="password"
FTPURL="ftp://$USER:$PASS@$HOST"
LCD="/path/of/your/local/dir"
RCD="/path/of/your/remote/dir"
#DELETE="--delete"
lftp -c "set ftp:list-options -a;
open '$FTPURL';
lcd $LCD;
cd $RCD;
mirror --reverse \
       $DELETE \
       --verbose \
       --exclude-glob a-dir-to-exclude/ \
       --exclude-glob a-file-to-exclude \
       --exclude-glob a-file-group-to-exclude* \
       --exclude-glob other-files-to-exclude"

Warning: make sure that the target directory exists, otherwise the cd command will fail, so operation including deleting trees of files will take place at wrong directory (root)!

I have updated script so that --delete option is disabled by defaut, enable it by uncommenting the DELETE= command.

You don't. rsync can't do that for you, it is a protocol of its own and doesn't work over FTP.

You might, however, want to try csync. IIRC it provides rsync-like behaviour over HTTP. I can't comment on whether it works over FTP, you'll have to try it.

Depending of what you're actually trying to do, another completely different approach could be use curlftps to mount a ftp folder, and then maybe rsync the two "local" folders.

The installation is different depending on your distro so I can't generalize on that, but you need to installfuse and curlftpfs (prolly Debian already has fuse install by default), then:

1. sudo apt-get install curlftpfs

2. Make sure the fuse module is loaded (modprobe fuse)

3. sudo curlftpfs ftp.yourserver.com /path/to/ftp/folder/ -o user=username:password,allow_other

Note that there's no space after the last comma (it's not a typo!). If you're satisfied with that or don't want to make that every time, you can add it to your fstab (usually in /etc/fstab):

curlftpfs#user:[email protected] /path/to/ftp/folder/ fuse auto,user,uid=1000,allow_other 0 0

In that case, you have to make sure the fuse module is loaded before.

Be advised though, of two things:

• That the developer dropped the project one or two years ago, so I don't know how usable/stable for the time being.
• If the password contains a weird character curlftpfs could fail (maybe you can do something with the .netrc).

There is weex...

Weex is an utility designed to automate the task of remotely maintaining a web page or other FTP archive. It will synchronize a set of local files to a remote server by performing uploads and remote deletes as required.

rsync does not work over ftp. On the remote side it needs either the rsync daemon or a shell that it can call rsync from. Ftp generally allows you to call a few commands and rsync is not one of them. There are other tools meant for automating ftp tasks like "lftp".

For what it appears you are trying to do, you could also use wget.

wget -m ftp://username:[email protected]

This seems like a good and free fit: https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/ftpsync/

You can use curlftpfs to mount ftp and use rsync after http://linux.die.net/man/1/curlftpfs

I am using GVFS/FTP. I mount my remote FTP servers with gigolo. As they are seen as local directories almost anything working on local files works. rsync is designed to compute file hashes remotely to compare files without transferring them, but doing that with virtual files transfers the files anyway. unison and freefilesync normally work well but I met a problem when they want to rename a file thy uploaded, no problem downloading. This could be a problem with gvfs 1.6.1.