NAME¶
ftp —
Internet file transfer
program
SYNOPSIS¶
ftp |
[-46AadefginpRtVv]
[-N netrc]
[-o output]
[-P port]
[-q quittime]
[-r retry]
[-s
srcaddr]
[-T
dir,max[,inc]]
[[user@ ]host
[port]]
[[user@ ]host: [path][/ ]]
[file:/// path]
[ftp:// [user[: password]@ ]host[: port]/ path[/ ][;type= X]]
[http:// [user[: password]@ ]host[: port]/ path]
[...] |
DESCRIPTION¶
ftp is the user interface to the Internet standard File
Transfer Protocol. The program allows a user to transfer files to and from a
remote network site.
The last five arguments will fetch a file using the FTP or HTTP protocols, or by
direct copying, into the current directory. This is ideal for scripts. Refer
to
AUTO-FETCHING FILES below for
more information.
Options may be specified at the command line, or to the command interpreter.
- -4
- Forces ftp to only use IPv4
addresses.
- -6
- Forces ftp to only use IPv6
addresses.
- -A
- Force active mode ftp. By default, ftp
will try to use passive mode ftp and fall back to active mode if passive
is not supported by the server. This option causes ftp
to always use an active connection. It is only useful for connecting to
very old servers that do not implement passive mode properly.
- -a
- Causes ftp to bypass normal login
procedure, and use an anonymous login instead.
- -d
- Enables debugging.
- -e
- Disables command line editing. This is useful for Emacs
ange-ftp mode.
- -f
- Forces a cache reload for transfers that go through the FTP
or HTTP proxies.
- -g
- Disables file name globbing.
- -i
- Turns off interactive prompting during multiple file
transfers.
- -N
netrc
- Use netrc instead of
~/.netrc. Refer to
THE .netrc FILE for more
information.
- -n
- Restrains ftp from attempting
“auto-login” upon initial connection for non auto-fetch
transfers. If auto-login is enabled, ftp will check the
.netrc (see below) file in the user's home directory for
an entry describing an account on the remote machine. If no entry exists,
ftp will prompt for the remote machine login name
(default is the user identity on the local machine), and, if necessary,
prompt for a password and an account with which to login. To override the
auto-login for auto-fetch transfers, specify the username (and optionally,
password) as appropriate.
- -o
output
- When auto-fetching files, save the contents in
output. output is parsed
according to the FILE NAMING
CONVENTIONS below. If output is not
‘-’ or doesn't start with ‘|’, then only the first
file specified will be retrieved into output; all
other files will be retrieved into the basename of their remote name.
- -P
port
- Sets the port number to port.
- -p
- Enable passive mode operation for use behind connection
filtering firewalls. This option has been deprecated as
ftp now tries to use passive mode by default, falling
back to active mode if the server does not support passive
connections.
- -q
quittime
- Quit if the connection has stalled for
quittime seconds.
- -R
- Restart all non-proxied auto-fetches.
- -r
wait
- Retry the connection attempt if it failed, pausing for
wait seconds.
- -s
srcaddr
- Uses srcaddr as the local IP address
for all connections.
- -t
- Enables packet tracing.
- -T
direction,maximum[,increment]
- Set the maximum transfer rate for
direction to maximum
bytes/second, and if specified, the increment to
increment bytes/second. Refer to
rate for more information.
- -u
URL file [...]
- Upload files on the command line to
URL where URL is one of the
ftp URL types as supported by auto-fetch (with an optional target filename
for single file uploads), and file is one or more
local files to be uploaded.
- -V
- Disable verbose and
progress, overriding the default of enabled when output
is to a terminal.
- -v
- Enable verbose and
progress. This is the default if output is to a terminal
(and in the case of progress, ftp is
the foreground process). Forces ftp to show all
responses from the remote server, as well as report on data transfer
statistics.
The client host with which
ftp is to communicate may be
specified on the command line. If this is done,
ftp will
immediately attempt to establish a connection to an FTP server on that host;
otherwise,
ftp will enter its command interpreter and await
instructions from the user. When
ftp is awaiting commands
from the user the prompt ‘
ftp>
’ is
provided to the user. The following commands are recognized by
ftp:
- !
[command
[args]]
- Invoke an interactive shell on the local machine. If there
are arguments, the first is taken to be a command to execute directly,
with the rest of the arguments as its arguments.
- $
macro-name
[args]
- Execute the macro macro-name that was
defined with the macdef command. Arguments are passed to
the macro unglobbed.
- account
[passwd]
- Supply a supplemental password required by a remote system
for access to resources once a login has been successfully completed. If
no argument is included, the user will be prompted for an account password
in a non-echoing input mode.
- append
local-file
[remote-file]
- Append a local file to a file on the remote machine. If
remote-file is left unspecified, the local file name
is used in naming the remote file after being altered by any
ntrans or nmap setting. File transfer
uses the current settings for type,
format, mode, and
structure.
- ascii
- Set the file transfer type to network
ASCII. This is the default type.
- bell
- Arrange that a bell be sounded after each file transfer
command is completed.
- binary
- Set the file transfer type to support
binary image transfer.
- bye
- Terminate the FTP session with the remote server and exit
ftp. An end of file will also terminate the session and
exit.
- case
- Toggle remote computer file name case mapping during
get, mget and mput
commands. When case is on (default is off), remote
computer file names with all letters in upper case are written in the
local directory with the letters mapped to lower case.
- cd
remote-directory
- Change the working directory on the remote machine to
remote-directory.
- cdup
- Change the remote machine working directory to the parent
of the current remote machine working directory.
- chmod
mode remote-file
- Change the permission modes of the file
remote-file on the remote system to
mode.
- close
- Terminate the FTP session with the remote server, and
return to the command interpreter. Any defined macros are erased.
- cr
- Toggle carriage return stripping during ascii type file
retrieval. Records are denoted by a carriage return/linefeed sequence
during ascii type file transfer. When cr is on (the
default), carriage returns are stripped from this sequence to conform with
the UNIX single linefeed record delimiter. Records
on non-UNIX remote systems may contain single
linefeeds; when an ascii type transfer is made, these linefeeds may be
distinguished from a record delimiter only when cr is
off.
- delete
remote-file
- Delete the file remote-file on the
remote machine.
- dir
[remote-path
[local-file]]
- Print a listing of the contents of a directory on the
remote machine. The listing includes any system-dependent information that
the server chooses to include; for example, most
UNIX systems will produce output from the command
‘
ls -l
’. If
remote-path is left unspecified, the current working
directory is used. If interactive prompting is on, ftp
will prompt the user to verify that the last argument is indeed the target
local file for receiving dir output. If no local file is
specified, or if local-file is
‘-’, the output is sent to the
terminal.
- disconnect
- A synonym for close.
- edit
- Toggle command line editing, and context sensitive command
and file completion. This is automatically enabled if input is from a
terminal, and disabled otherwise.
- epsv epsv4
epsv6
- Toggle the use of the extended
EPSV
and EPRT
commands on all IP, IPv4, and IPv6
connections respectively. First try EPSV /
EPRT
, and then PASV /
PORT
. This is enabled by default. If an extended
command fails then this option will be temporarily disabled for the
duration of the current connection, or until epsv,
epsv4, or epsv6 is executed
again.
- exit
- A synonym for bye.
- features
- Display what features the remote server supports (using the
FEAT
command).
- fget
localfile
- Retrieve the files listed in
localfile, which has one line per filename.
- form
format
- Set the file transfer form to
format. The default (and only supported) format is
“non-print”.
- ftp
host
[port]
- A synonym for open.
- ftp_debug
[ftp_debug-value]
- Toggle debugging mode. If an optional
ftp_debug-value is specified it is used to set the
debugging level. When debugging is on, ftp prints each
command sent to the remote machine, preceded by the string
‘
-->
’.
- gate
[host
[port]]
- Toggle gate-ftp mode, which used to connect through the TIS
FWTK and Gauntlet ftp proxies. This will not be permitted if the gate-ftp
server hasn't been set (either explicitly by the user, or from the
FTPSERVER
environment variable). If
host is given, then gate-ftp mode will be enabled,
and the gate-ftp server will be set to host. If
port is also given, that will be used as the port to
connect to on the gate-ftp server.
- get
remote-file
[local-file]
- Retrieve the remote-file and store it
on the local machine. If the local file name is not specified, it is given
the same name it has on the remote machine, subject to alteration by the
current case, ntrans, and
nmap settings. The current settings for
type, form, mode,
and structure are used while transferring the file.
- glob
- Toggle filename expansion for mdelete,
mget, mput, and
mreget. If globbing is turned off with
glob, the file name arguments are taken literally and
not expanded. Globbing for mput is done as in
csh(1). For mdelete,
mget, and mreget, each remote file
name is expanded separately on the remote machine and the lists are not
merged. Expansion of a directory name is likely to be different from
expansion of the name of an ordinary file: the exact result depends on the
foreign operating system and ftp server, and can be previewed by doing
‘
mls remote-files -
’ Note:
mget, mput and
mreget are not meant to transfer entire directory
subtrees of files. That can be done by transferring a
tar(1) archive of the subtree (in binary mode).
- hash
[size]
- Toggle hash-sign (‘#’) printing for each data
block transferred. The size of a data block defaults to 1024 bytes. This
can be changed by specifying size in bytes. Enabling
hash disables progress.
- help
[command]
- Print an informative message about the meaning of
command. If no argument is given,
ftp prints a list of the known commands.
- idle
[seconds]
- Set the inactivity timer on the remote server to
seconds seconds. If seconds is
omitted, the current inactivity timer is printed.
- image
- A synonym for binary.
- lcd
[directory]
- Change the working directory on the local machine. If no
directory is specified, the user's home directory is
used.
- less
file
- A synonym for page.
- lpage
local-file
- Display local-file with the program
specified by the set pager option.
- lpwd
- Print the working directory on the local machine.
- ls
[remote-path
[local-file]]
- A synonym for dir.
- macdef
macro-name
- Define a macro. Subsequent lines are stored as the macro
macro-name; a null line (consecutive newline
characters in a file or carriage returns from the terminal) terminates
macro input mode. There is a limit of 16 macros and 4096 total characters
in all defined macros. Macro names can be a maximum of 8 characters.
Macros are only applicable to the current session they are defined within
(or if defined outside a session, to the session invoked with the next
open command), and remain defined until a
close command is executed. To invoke a macro, use the
$ command (see above).
The macro processor interprets ‘$’ and ‘\’ as
special characters. A ‘$’ followed by a number (or numbers) is
replaced by the corresponding argument on the macro invocation command
line. A ‘$’ followed by an ‘i’ signals the macro
processor that the executing macro is to be looped. On the first pass
“$i” is replaced by the first argument on the macro invocation
command line, on the second pass it is replaced by the second argument,
and so on. A ‘\’ followed by any character is replaced by that
character. Use the ‘\’ to prevent special treatment of the
‘$’.
- mdelete
[remote-files]
- Delete the remote-files on the remote
machine.
- mdir
remote-files local-file
- Like dir, except multiple remote files
may be specified. If interactive prompting is on, ftp
will prompt the user to verify that the last argument is indeed the target
local file for receiving mdir output.
- mget
remote-files
- Expand the remote-files on the remote
machine and do a get for each file name thus produced.
See glob for details on the filename expansion.
Resulting file names will then be processed according to
case, ntrans, and
nmap settings. Files are transferred into the local
working directory, which can be changed with ‘
lcd
directory
’; new local directories can be created with
‘! mkdir directory
’.
- mkdir
directory-name
- Make a directory on the remote machine.
- mls
remote-files local-file
- Like ls, except multiple remote files may
be specified, and the local-file must be specified.
If interactive prompting is on, ftp will prompt the user
to verify that the last argument is indeed the target local file for
receiving mls output.
- mlsd
[remote-path]
- Display the contents of remote-path
(which should default to the current directory if not given) in a
machine-parsable form, using
MLSD
. The format of
display can be changed with ‘remopts mlst ...’.
- mlst
[remote-path]
- Display the details about remote-path
(which should default to the current directory if not given) in a
machine-parsable form, using
MLST
. The format of
display can be changed with ‘remopts mlst ...’.
- mode
mode-name
- Set the file transfer mode to
mode-name. The default (and only supported) mode is
“stream”.
- modtime
remote-file
- Show the last modification time of the file on the remote
machine, in
RFC2822
format.
- more
file
- A synonym for page.
- mput
local-files
- Expand wild cards in the list of local files given as
arguments and do a put for each file in the resulting
list. See glob for details of filename expansion.
Resulting file names will then be processed according to
ntrans and nmap settings.
- mreget
remote-files
- As per mget, but performs a
reget instead of get.
- msend
local-files
- A synonym for mput.
- newer
remote-file
[local-file]
- Get the file only if the modification time of the remote
file is more recent that the file on the current system. If the file does
not exist on the current system, the remote file is considered
newer. Otherwise, this command is identical to
get.
- nlist
[remote-path
[local-file]]
- A synonym for ls.
- nmap
[inpattern outpattern]
- Set or unset the filename mapping mechanism. If no
arguments are specified, the filename mapping mechanism is unset. If
arguments are specified, remote filenames are mapped during
mput commands and put commands issued
without a specified remote target filename. If arguments are specified,
local filenames are mapped during mget commands and
get commands issued without a specified local target
filename. This command is useful when connecting to a
non-UNIX remote computer
with different file naming conventions or practices. The mapping follows
the pattern set by inpattern and
outpattern.
[Inpattern] is a template
for incoming filenames (which may have already been processed according to
the ntrans and case settings).
Variable templating is accomplished by including the sequences
“$1”, “$2”, ... “$9” in
inpattern. Use ‘\’ to prevent this
special treatment of the ‘$’ character. All other characters
are treated literally, and are used to determine the
nmap
[inpattern] variable values.
For example, given inpattern $1.$2 and the remote
file name "mydata.data", $1 would have the value
"mydata", and $2 would have the value "data". The
outpattern determines the resulting mapped filename.
The sequences “$1”, “$2”, ... “$9” are
replaced by any value resulting from the inpattern
template. The sequence “$0” is replaced by the original
filename. Additionally, the sequence
“[seq1,
seq2]” is replaced by
[seq1] if
seq1 is not a null string; otherwise it is replaced
by seq2. For example, the command
nmap $1.$2.$3 [$1,$2].[$2,file]
would yield the output filename "myfile.data" for input filenames
"myfile.data" and "myfile.data.old",
"myfile.file" for the input filename "myfile", and
"myfile.myfile" for the input filename ".myfile".
Spaces may be included in outpattern, as in the
example:
nmap $1 sed s/ *$// > $1
Use the ‘\’ character to prevent special treatment of the
‘$’, ‘[’, ‘]’, and ‘,’
characters.
- ntrans
[inchars
[outchars]]
- Set or unset the filename character translation mechanism.
If no arguments are specified, the filename character translation
mechanism is unset. If arguments are specified, characters in remote
filenames are translated during mput commands and
put commands issued without a specified remote target
filename. If arguments are specified, characters in local filenames are
translated during mget commands and
get commands issued without a specified local target
filename. This command is useful when connecting to a
non-UNIX remote computer
with different file naming conventions or practices. Characters in a
filename matching a character in inchars are
replaced with the corresponding character in
outchars. If the character's position in
inchars is longer than the length of
outchars, the character is deleted from the file
name.
- open
host
[port]
- Establish a connection to the specified
host FTP server. An optional port number may be
supplied, in which case, ftp will attempt to contact an
FTP server at that port. If the set auto-login option is
on (default), ftp will also attempt to automatically log
the user in to the FTP server (see below).
- page
file
- Retrieve file and display with the
program specified by the set pager option.
- passive
[auto]
- Toggle passive mode (if no arguments are given). If
auto is given, act as if
FTPMODE
is set to ‘auto’. If passive mode is turned on (default),
ftp will send a PASV
command for
all data connections instead of a PORT
command.
The PASV
command requests that the remote server
open a port for the data connection and return the address of that port.
The remote server listens on that port and the client connects to it. When
using the more traditional PORT
command, the
client listens on a port and sends that address to the remote server, who
connects back to it. Passive mode is useful when using
ftp through a gateway router or host that controls the
directionality of traffic. (Note that though FTP servers are required to
support the PASV
command by
RFC1123
, some do not.)
- pdir
[remote-path]
- Perform dir
[remote-path], and display
the result with the program specified by the set pager
option.
- pls
[remote-path]
- Perform ls
[remote-path], and display
the result with the program specified by the set pager
option.
- pmlsd
[remote-path]
- Perform mlsd
[remote-path], and display
the result with the program specified by the set pager
option.
- preserve
- Toggle preservation of modification times on retrieved
files.
- progress
- Toggle display of transfer progress bar. The progress bar
will be disabled for a transfer that has local-file
as ‘-’ or a command that starts with
‘|’. Refer to
FILE NAMING CONVENTIONS
for more information. Enabling progress disables
hash.
- prompt
- Toggle interactive prompting. Interactive prompting occurs
during multiple file transfers to allow the user to selectively retrieve
or store files. If prompting is turned off (default is on), any
mget or mput will transfer all files,
and any mdelete will delete all files.
When prompting is on, the following commands are available at a prompt:
- a
- Answer ‘yes’ to the current file, and
automatically answer ‘yes’ to any remaining files for the
current command.
- n
- Answer ‘no’, and do not transfer the
file.
- p
- Answer ‘yes’ to the current file, and turn
off prompt mode (as is “prompt off” had been given).
- q
- Terminate the current operation.
- y
- Answer ‘yes’, and transfer the file.
- ?
- Display a help message.
Any other response will answer ‘yes’ to the current file.
- proxy
ftp-command
- Execute an ftp command on a secondary control connection.
This command allows simultaneous connection to two remote FTP servers for
transferring files between the two servers. The first
proxy command should be an open, to
establish the secondary control connection. Enter the command "proxy
?" to see other FTP commands executable on the secondary connection.
The following commands behave differently when prefaced by
proxy: open will not define new macros
during the auto-login process, close will not erase
existing macro definitions, get and
mget transfer files from the host on the primary control
connection to the host on the secondary control connection, and
put, mput, and
append transfer files from the host on the secondary
control connection to the host on the primary control connection. Third
party file transfers depend upon support of the FTP protocol
PASV
command by the server on the secondary
control connection.
- put
local-file
[remote-file]
- Store a local file on the remote machine. If
remote-file is left unspecified, the local file name
is used after processing according to any ntrans or
nmap settings in naming the remote file. File transfer
uses the current settings for type,
format, mode, and
structure.
- pwd
- Print the name of the current working directory on the
remote machine.
- quit
- A synonym for bye.
- quote
arg1 arg2 ...
- The arguments specified are sent, verbatim, to the remote
FTP server.
- rate
direction
[maximum
[increment]]
- Throttle the maximum transfer rate to
maximum bytes/second. If
maximum is 0, disable the throttle.
direction may be one of:
- all
- Both directions.
- get
- Incoming transfers.
- put
- Outgoing transfers.
maximum can be modified on the fly by
increment bytes (default: 1024) each time a given
signal is received:
SIGUSR1
- Increment maximum by
increment bytes.
SIGUSR2
- Decrement maximum by
increment bytes. The result must be a positive
number.
If maximum is not supplied, the current throttle rates
are displayed.
Note: rate is not yet implemented for ascii mode
transfers.
- rcvbuf
size
- Set the size of the socket receive buffer to
size.
- recv
remote-file
[local-file]
- A synonym for get.
- reget
remote-file
[local-file]
- reget acts like get,
except that if local-file exists and is smaller than
remote-file, local-file is
presumed to be a partially transferred copy of
remote-file and the transfer is continued from the
apparent point of failure. This command is useful when transferring very
large files over networks that are prone to dropping connections.
- remopts
command
[command-options]
- Set options on the remote FTP server for
command to command-options
(whose absence is handled on a command-specific basis). Remote FTP
commands known to support options include: ‘MLST’ (used for
MLSD
and MLST
).
- rename
[from
[to]]
- Rename the file from on the remote
machine, to the file to.
- reset
- Clear reply queue. This command re-synchronizes
command/reply sequencing with the remote FTP server. Resynchronization may
be necessary following a violation of the FTP protocol by the remote
server.
- restart
marker
- Restart the immediately following get or
put at the indicated marker. On
UNIX systems, marker is usually a byte offset into
the file.
- rhelp
[command-name]
- Request help from the remote FTP server. If a
command-name is specified it is supplied to the
server as well.
- rmdir
directory-name
- Delete a directory on the remote machine.
- rstatus
[remote-file]
- With no arguments, show status of remote machine. If
remote-file is specified, show status of
remote-file on remote machine.
- runique
- Toggle storing of files on the local system with unique
filenames. If a file already exists with a name equal to the target local
filename for a get or mget command, a
".1" is appended to the name. If the resulting name matches
another existing file, a ".2" is appended to the original name.
If this process continues up to ".99", an error message is
printed, and the transfer does not take place. The generated unique
filename will be reported. Note that runique will not
affect local files generated from a shell command (see below). The default
value is off.
- send
local-file
[remote-file]
- A synonym for put.
- sendport
- Toggle the use of
PORT
commands. By
default, ftp will attempt to use a
PORT
command when establishing a connection for
each data transfer. The use of PORT
commands can
prevent delays when performing multiple file transfers. If the
PORT
command fails, ftp will use
the default data port. When the use of PORT
commands is disabled, no attempt will be made to use
PORT
commands for each data transfer. This is
useful for certain FTP implementations which do ignore
PORT
commands but, incorrectly, indicate they've
been accepted.
- set
[option
value]
- Set option to
value. If option and
value are not given, display all of the options and
their values. The currently supported options are:
- anonpass
- Defaults to
$FTPANONPASS
- ftp_proxy
- Defaults to
$ftp_proxy
.
- http_proxy
- Defaults to
$http_proxy
.
- no_proxy
- Defaults to
$no_proxy
.
- pager
- Defaults to
$PAGER
.
- prompt
- Defaults to
$FTPPROMPT
.
- rprompt
- Defaults to
$FTPRPROMPT
.
- site
arg1 arg2 ...
- The arguments specified are sent, verbatim, to the remote
FTP server as a
SITE
command.
- size
remote-file
- Return size of remote-file on remote
machine.
- sndbuf
size
- Set the size of the socket send buffer to
size.
- status
- Show the current status of ftp.
- struct
struct-name
- Set the file transfer structure to
struct-name. The default (and only supported)
structure is “file”.
- sunique
- Toggle storing of files on remote machine under unique file
names. The remote FTP server must support FTP protocol
STOU
command for successful completion. The remote
server will report unique name. Default value is off.
- system
- Show the type of operating system running on the remote
machine.
- tenex
- Set the file transfer type to that needed to talk to TENEX
machines.
- throttle
- A synonym for rate.
- trace
- Toggle packet tracing.
- type
[type-name]
- Set the file transfer type to
type-name. If no type is specified, the current type
is printed. The default type is network ASCII.
- umask
[newmask]
- Set the default umask on the remote server to
newmask. If newmask is
omitted, the current umask is printed.
- unset
option
- Unset option. Refer to
set for more information.
- usage
command
- Print the usage message for
command.
- user
user-name
[password
[account]]
- Identify yourself to the remote FTP server. If the
password is not specified and the server requires
it, ftp will prompt the user for it (after disabling
local echo). If an account field is not specified,
and the FTP server requires it, the user will be prompted for it. If an
account field is specified, an account command will
be relayed to the remote server after the login sequence is completed if
the remote server did not require it for logging in. Unless
ftp is invoked with “auto-login” disabled,
this process is done automatically on initial connection to the FTP
server.
- verbose
- Toggle verbose mode. In verbose mode, all responses from
the FTP server are displayed to the user. In addition, if verbose is on,
when a file transfer completes, statistics regarding the efficiency of the
transfer are reported. By default, verbose is on.
- xferbuf
size
- Set the size of the socket send and receive buffers to
size.
- ?
[command]
- A synonym for help.
Command arguments which have embedded spaces may be quoted with quote
‘"’ marks.
Commands which toggle settings can take an explicit
on or
off argument to force the setting appropriately.
Commands which take a byte count as an argument (e.g.,
hash,
rate, and
xferbuf) support an optional
suffix on the argument which changes the interpretation of the argument.
Supported suffixes are:
b
- Causes no modification. (Optional)
k
- Kilo; multiply the argument by 1024
m
- Mega; multiply the argument by 1048576
g
- Giga; multiply the argument by 1073741824
If
ftp receives a
SIGINFO
(see the
“status” argument of
stty(1)) or
SIGQUIT
signal whilst a transfer is in progress, the
current transfer rate statistics will be written to the standard error output,
in the same format as the standard completion message.
AUTO-FETCHING FILES¶
In addition to standard commands, this version of
ftp supports
an auto-fetch feature. To enable auto-fetch, simply pass the list of
hostnames/files on the command line.
The following formats are valid syntax for an auto-fetch element:
- [user
@
]host:
[path][/
]
- “Classic” FTP format.
If path contains a glob character and globbing is
enabled, (see glob), then the equivalent of
‘
mget path
’ is performed.
If the directory component of path contains no
globbing characters, it is stored locally with the name basename (see
basename(1)) of path, in the current
directory. Otherwise, the full remote name is used as the local name,
relative to the local root directory.
ftp://
[user[:
password]@
]host[:
port]/
path[/
][;type=
X]
- An FTP URL, retrieved using the FTP protocol if
set ftp_proxy isn't defined. Otherwise, transfer the URL
using HTTP via the proxy defined in set ftp_proxy. If
set ftp_proxy isn't defined and
user is given, login as user.
In this case, use password if supplied, otherwise
prompt the user for one.
If a suffix of ‘;type=A’ or ‘;type=I’ is supplied,
then the transfer type will take place as ascii or binary (respectively).
The default transfer type is binary.
In order to be compliant with
RFC3986
,
ftp interprets the path part of an
“ftp://” auto-fetch URL as follows:
- The ‘
/
’
immediately after the
host[:
port]
is interpreted as a separator before the path,
and not as part of the path itself.
- The path is interpreted as a
‘
/
’-separated list of name
components. For all but the last such component, ftp
performs the equivalent of a cd command. For the
last path component, ftp performs the equivalent of
a get command.
- Empty name components, which result from
‘
//
’ within the
path, or from an extra
‘/
’ at the beginning of the
path, will cause the equivalent of a
cd command without a directory name. This is
unlikely to be useful.
- Any
‘
%
XX’ codes
(per RFC3986
) within the path components are
decoded, with XX representing a character code
in hexadecimal. This decoding takes place after the
path has been split into components, but before
each component is used in the equivalent of a cd or
get command. Some often-used codes are
‘%2F
’ (which represents
‘/
’) and
‘%7E
’ (which represents
‘~
’).
The above interpretation has the following consequences:
- The path is interpreted relative to the default
login directory of the specified user or of the
‘anonymous’ user. If the / directory is
required, use a leading path of “%2F”. If a user's home
directory is required (and the remote server supports the syntax), use
a leading path of “%7Euser/”. For example, to retrieve
/etc/motd from ‘localhost’ as the user
‘myname’ with the password ‘mypass’, use
“ftp://myname:mypass@localhost/%2fetc/motd”
- The exact cd and
get commands can be controlled by careful choice of
where to use ‘/’ and where to use ‘%2F’ (or
‘%2f’). For example, the following URLs correspond to the
equivalents of the indicated commands:
- ftp://host/dir1/dir2/file
- “cd dir1”, “cd dir2”,
“get file”.
- ftp://host/%2Fdir1/dir2/file
- “cd /dir1”, “cd dir2”,
“get file”.
- ftp://host/dir1%2Fdir2/file
- “cd dir1/dir2”, “get
file”.
- ftp://host/%2Fdir1%2Fdir2/file
- “cd /dir1/dir2”, “get
file”.
- ftp://host/dir1%2Fdir2%2Ffile
- “get dir1/dir2/file”.
- ftp://host/%2Fdir1%2Fdir2%2Ffile
- “get /dir1/dir2/file”.
- You must have appropriate access permission for each
of the intermediate directories that is used in the equivalent of a
cd command.
http://
[user[:
password]@
]host[:
port]/
path
- An HTTP URL, retrieved using the HTTP protocol. If
set http_proxy is defined, it is used as a URL to an
HTTP proxy server. If HTTP authorization is required to retrieve
path, and ‘user’ (and optionally
‘password’) is in the URL, use them for the first attempt to
authenticate.
file:///
path
- A local URL, copied from
/path on the local host.
about:
topic
- Display information regarding topic;
no file is retrieved for this auto-fetched element. Supported values
include:
about:ftp
- Information about ftp.
about:version
- The version of ftp. Useful to provide
when reporting problems.
Unless noted otherwise above, and
-o
output is not given, the file is stored in the current
directory as the
basename(1) of
path.
Note that if a HTTP redirect is received, the fetch is retried using the new
target URL supplied by the server, with a corresponding new
path. Using an explicit
-o
output is recommended, to avoid writing to unexpected
file names.
If a classic format or an FTP URL format has a trailing ‘/’ or an
empty
path component, then
ftp will
connect to the site and
cd to the directory given as the
path, and leave the user in interactive mode ready for further input. This
will not work if
set ftp_proxy is being used.
Direct HTTP transfers use HTTP 1.1. Proxied FTP and HTTP transfers use HTTP 1.0.
If
-R is given, all auto-fetches that don't go via the FTP or
HTTP proxies will be restarted. For FTP, this is implemented by using
reget instead of
get. For HTTP, this is
implemented by using the ‘Range: bytes=’ HTTP/1.1 directive.
If WWW or proxy WWW authentication is required, you will be prompted to enter a
username and password to authenticate with.
When specifying IPv6 numeric addresses in a URL, you need to surround the
address in square brackets. E.g.: “ftp://[::1]:21/”. This is
because colons are used in IPv6 numeric address as well as being the separator
for the port number.
ABORTING A FILE TRANSFER¶
To abort a file transfer, use the terminal interrupt key (usually Ctrl-C).
Sending transfers will be immediately halted. Receiving transfers will be
halted by sending an FTP protocol
ABOR
command to the
remote server, and discarding any further data received. The speed at which
this is accomplished depends upon the remote server's support for
ABOR
processing. If the remote server does not support
the
ABOR
command, the prompt will not appear until the
remote server has completed sending the requested file.
If the terminal interrupt key sequence is used whilst
ftp is
awaiting a reply from the remote server for the ABOR processing, then the
connection will be closed. This is different from the traditional behaviour
(which ignores the terminal interrupt during this phase), but is considered
more useful.
FILE NAMING CONVENTIONS¶
Files specified as arguments to
ftp commands are processed
according to the following rules.
- If the file name ‘-’ is
specified, the stdin (for reading) or
stdout (for writing) is used.
- If the first character of the file name is
‘|’, the remainder of the argument is interpreted as a shell
command. ftp then forks a shell, using
popen(3) with the argument supplied, and reads (writes)
from the stdout (stdin). If the shell command includes spaces, the
argument must be quoted; e.g. ““
|
ls -lt
””. A particularly useful example of this
mechanism is: “dir ""
|more
”.
- Failing the above checks, if “globbing” is
enabled, local file names are expanded according to the rules used in the
csh(1); see the glob command. If the
ftp command expects a single local file (e.g.
put), only the first filename generated by the
"globbing" operation is used.
- For mget commands and
get commands with unspecified local file names, the
local filename is the remote filename, which may be altered by a
case, ntrans, or
nmap setting. The resulting filename may then be altered
if runique is on.
- For mput commands and
put commands with unspecified remote file names, the
remote filename is the local filename, which may be altered by a
ntrans or nmap setting. The resulting
filename may then be altered by the remote server if
sunique is on.
FILE TRANSFER PARAMETERS¶
The FTP specification specifies many parameters which may affect a file
transfer. The
type may be one of “ascii”,
“image” (binary), “ebcdic”, and “local byte
size” (for PDP-10's and PDP-20's mostly).
ftp supports
the ascii and image types of file transfer, plus local byte size 8 for
tenex mode transfers.
ftp supports only the default values for the remaining file
transfer parameters:
mode,
form, and
struct.
THE .netrc FILE¶
The
.netrc file contains login and initialization information
used by the auto-login process. It resides in the user's home directory,
unless overridden with the
-N netrc
option, or specified in the
NETRC
environment
variable. The following tokens are recognized; they may be separated by
spaces, tabs, or new-lines:
- machine
name
- Identify a remote machine name. The
auto-login process searches the .netrc file for a
machine token that matches the remote machine specified
on the ftp command line or as an open
command argument. Once a match is made, the subsequent
.netrc tokens are processed, stopping when the end of
file is reached or another machine or a
default token is encountered.
- default
- This is the same as machine
name except that default matches
any name. There can be only one default token, and it
must be after all machine tokens. This is normally used
as:
default login anonymous password
user@site
thereby giving the user an automatic anonymous FTP login to machines not
specified in .netrc. This can be overridden by using the
-n flag to disable auto-login.
- login
name
- Identify a user on the remote machine. If this token is
present, the auto-login process will initiate a login using the specified
name.
- password
string
- Supply a password. If this token is present, the auto-login
process will supply the specified string if the remote server requires a
password as part of the login process. Note that if this token is present
in the .netrc file for any user other than
anonymous, ftp will abort the
auto-login process if the .netrc is readable by anyone
besides the user.
- account
string
- Supply an additional account password. If this token is
present, the auto-login process will supply the specified string if the
remote server requires an additional account password, or the auto-login
process will initiate an
ACCT
command if it does
not.
- macdef
name
- Define a macro. This token functions like the
ftp macdef command functions. A macro
is defined with the specified name; its contents begin with the next
.netrc line and continue until a blank line (consecutive
new-line characters) is encountered. Like the other tokens in the
.netrc file, a macdef is applicable
only to the machine definition preceding it. A
macdef entry cannot be used by multiple
machine definitions; rather, it must be defined
following each machine it is intended to be used with.
If a macro named init is defined, it is automatically
executed as the last step in the auto-login process. For example,
default
macdef init
epsv4 off
followed by a blank line.
COMMAND LINE EDITING¶
ftp supports interactive command line editing, via the
editline(3) library. It is enabled with the
edit command, and is enabled by default if input is from a
tty. Previous lines can be recalled and edited with the arrow keys, and other
GNU Emacs-style editing keys may be used as well.
The
editline(3) library is configured with a
.editrc file - refer to
editrc(5) for more
information.
An extra key binding is available to
ftp to provide context
sensitive command and filename completion (including remote file completion).
To use this, bind a key to the
editline(3) command
ftp-complete. By default, this is bound to the TAB key.
COMMAND LINE PROMPT¶
By default,
ftp displays a command line prompt of
“ftp> ” to the user. This can be changed with the
set prompt command.
A prompt can be displayed on the right side of the screen (after the command
input) with the
set rprompt command.
The following formatting sequences are replaced by the given information:
%/
- The current remote working directory.
- %c[[
0
]n],%.
[[0
]n]
- The trailing component of the current remote working
directory, or n trailing components if a digit
n is given. If n begins with
‘0’, the number of skipped components precede the trailing
component(s) in the format
“
/
<
number>
trailing”
(for ‘%c’) or
“...
trailing”
(for ‘%.’).
%M
- The remote host name.
%m
- The remote host name, up to the first ‘.’.
%n
- The remote user name.
%%
- A single ‘%’.
ENVIRONMENT¶
ftp uses the following environment variables.
FTPANONPASS
- Password to send in an anonymous FTP transfer. Defaults to
“
`whoami`@
”.
FTPMODE
- Overrides the default operation mode. Support values are:
- active
- active mode FTP only
- auto
- automatic determination of passive or active (this is
the default)
- gate
- gate-ftp mode
- passive
- passive mode FTP only
FTPPROMPT
- Command-line prompt to use. Defaults to “ftp>
”. Refer to COMMAND LINE
PROMPT for more information.
FTPRPROMPT
- Command-line right side prompt to use. Defaults to
“”. Refer to COMMAND
LINE PROMPT for more information.
FTPSERVER
- Host to use as gate-ftp server when gate
is enabled.
FTPSERVERPORT
- Port to use when connecting to gate-ftp server when
gate is enabled. Default is port returned by a
getservbyname() lookup of
“ftpgate/tcp”.
FTPUSERAGENT
- The value to send for the HTTP User-Agent header.
HOME
- For default location of a .netrc file, if
one exists.
NETRC
- An alternate location of the .netrc
file.
PAGER
- Used by various commands to display files. Defaults to
more(1) if empty or not set.
SHELL
- For default shell.
ftp_proxy
- URL of FTP proxy to use when making FTP URL requests (if
not defined, use the standard FTP protocol).
See
http_proxy
for further notes about proxy
use.
http_proxy
- URL of HTTP proxy to use when making HTTP URL requests. If
proxy authentication is required and there is a username and password in
this URL, they will automatically be used in the first attempt to
authenticate to the proxy.
If “unsafe” URL characters are required in the username or
password (for example ‘@’ or ‘/’), encode them
with
RFC3986
‘%
XX’ encoding.
Note that the use of a username and password in
ftp_proxy
and http_proxy
may be incompatible with other programs that use it (such as
lynx(1)).
NOTE: this is not used for interactive sessions, only for
command-line fetches.
no_proxy
- A space or comma separated list of hosts (or domains) for
which proxying is not to be used. Each entry may have an optional trailing
":port", which restricts the matching to connections to that
port.
EXTENDED PASSIVE MODE
AND FIREWALLS¶
Some firewall configurations do not allow
ftp to use extended
passive mode. If you find that even a simple
ls appears to
hang after printing a message such as this:
229 Entering Extended Passive Mode
(|||58551|)
then you will need to disable extended passive mode with
epsv4
off. See the above section
The
.netrc File for an example of how to make this automatic.
SEE ALSO¶
getservbyname(3),
editrc(5),
services(5),
ftpd(8)
STANDARDS¶
ftp attempts to be compliant with:
RFC0959
- File Transfer Protocol
RFC1123
- Requirements for Internet Hosts - Application
and Support
RFC1635
- How to Use Anonymous FTP
RFC2389
- Feature negotiation mechanism for the File
Transfer Protocol
RFC2428
- FTP Extensions for IPv6 and NATs
RFC2616
- Hypertext Transfer Protocol --
HTTP/1.1
RFC2822
- Internet Message Format
RFC3659
- Extensions to FTP
RFC3986
- Uniform Resource Identifier (URI)
HISTORY¶
The
ftp command appeared in
4.2BSD.
Various features such as command line editing, context sensitive command and
file completion, dynamic progress bar, automatic fetching of files and URLs,
modification time preservation, transfer rate throttling, configurable command
line prompt, and other enhancements over the standard
BSD ftp were implemented in
NetBSD 1.3 and later releases by
Luke Mewburn ⟨lukem@NetBSD.org⟩.
IPv6 support was added by the WIDE/KAME project (but may not be present in all
non-NetBSD versions of this program, depending if the operating system
supports IPv6 in a similar manner to KAME).
BUGS¶
Correct execution of many commands depends upon proper behavior by the remote
server.
An error in the treatment of carriage returns in the
4.2BSD ascii-mode transfer code has been corrected.
This correction may result in incorrect transfers of binary files to and from
4.2BSD servers using the ascii type. Avoid this
problem by using the binary image type.
ftp assumes that all IPv4 mapped addresses (IPv6 addresses
with a form like
::ffff:10.1.1.1
) indicate IPv4
destinations which can be handled by
AF_INET
sockets.
However, in certain IPv6 network configurations, this assumption is not true.
In such an environment, IPv4 mapped addresses must be passed to
AF_INET6
sockets directly. For example, if your site
uses a SIIT translator for IPv6-to-IPv4 translation,
ftp is
unable to support your configuration.