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matt wilkie
Asked: 2010-11-12 17:55:41 +0800 CST

Recommended console ftp clients

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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?

ftp console

4 Answers

  1. To my mind, the most powerful command-line ftp client is undoubtly lftp.

    1. it allows one to use standard shell command over the ftp wire
    2. It provides up/down queue for long operations
    • 22
  2. Best Answer

    Check if Midnight Commander (mc) is installed. If so, you can do ftp from there.

    • 20

  3. 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 curlftpfs

    Then 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 ~/ftp

    Then 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.

    • 16

  4. Just 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.

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