Topic: unix ftp commands

K- Not really sure where to post this... I've been delving into operating my server through SSH more and more lately, in fact I'm really starting to like it, seems to be much more powerful. Anyways, now I'm trying to do simple ftp stuff and it's kick'n my trash. I'm not having any problems connecting; just uploading. Using the put command is all I can find and it seems to work only one file at a time...? (totally could be wrong on that). It would be really cool if I could upload an entire directory, perhaps with the -r flag or something but that brings me to my next question as I can't even locate my directory... Because my lovely windows has directories named like "My Documents", I can't go C:\My Documents. I get an error saying "My", for example, doesn't exist... Anyways, obviously I'm a total newbie with this stuff so any pointers would be great, THANKS!

Just got started with manual ftp commands myself, I think mput for multiple put is your friend.
http://www.cs.colostate.edu/helpdocs/ftp.html

I always use ncftp when I can, which has file name autocompletion, site bookmarks and other handy things. It comes with most distributions, I think. Or else:

http://www.ncftp.com/ncftp/

I'm pretty sure I have uploaded entire directories with its put command too.

If you're starting with SSH then you may actually want to look at scp. It doesn't require the ftp server and the scp command is just like cp'ing file to another directory so you can use wildcards etc.

About a year ago I pretty much switched to this as opposed to ftp most of the time when I'm just copying files. FTP gives you more of the browse ability so it's still better when I don't know what I'm trying to get or where I'm trying to put things but for it I use a gui (using the fireftp ext. for firefox).



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

As a graphical SSH file browser and scp copier this one works pretty well:


http://ftp.ssh.com/pub/ssh/SSHSecureShellClient-3.2.9.exe

( from here: http://www.ssh.com/support/downloads/secureshellwks/non-commercial.html )


kuckus

Redroy: From your description, I infer that you are running ftp on your windows machine and uploading files to a UNIX machine. If that is what you're doing, you can use any ftp program on your windows machine and it will connect to the UNIX machine.

For example, if you use WS_FTP or cuteftp on windows, you can select a list of files and upload them to the server and not worry about typing each filename.

If you are trying to upload to a windows machine from UNIX, there are several graphical FTP programs that should allow you to do this stuff without having to use the command line.

You will find FTP much easier to use if you can use a graphical program, because they all will do things like file globbing for you.

If there is some reason you need to use a command line program, as _Mauro said, use mput to upload multiple files from a directory. Try putting filenames with spaces in them in quotes. For example, "My Documents" or 'My Documents' or My\ Documents should work. Remember that UNIX filenames are case sensitive so you might be better off converting all your Windows filenames to lower case.

As bitdamaged pointed out, you might be better of using scp than ftp if your are going to use command line programs. scp is a standard part of most Linux releases and you can get a good scp/telnet/scp program for windows from PuTTY.

Let us know if you have any more questions about this.

If you want to continue learnign more about ftp, it would help us if you would let us know which system you are running FTP on and which FTP program you are using.

One other helpful hint: most command line ftp programs will give you a list of commands they recognize if you type help at the ftp prompt.

.



-- not necessarily stoned... just beautiful.

Wow! Thanks everyone... this should do me more than good. The Asylum never ceases to amaze me <tear>.