Man page for ncftpget
July 10, 2007 – 12:17 amncftpget
Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: NcFTP Software
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NAME
ncftpget – Internet file transfer program for scripts
SYNOPSIS
ncftpget
[options]
remote–host local–directory remote–files…
ncftpget
–f login.cfg
[options]
local–directory remote–files…
ncftpget
[options]
ftp://url.style.host/path/name
ncftpget
–c
[options]
remote–host remote–file
> stdout
ncftpget
–C
[options]
remote–host remote–file local–path–name
ncftpget
–c
[options]
ftp://url.style.host/path/name
> stdout
OPTIONS
Command line flags:
- –u XX
Use username
XXinstead of anonymous.
- –p XX
Use password
XXwith the username.
- –P XX
Use port number
XXinstead of the default FTP service port (21).
- –j XX
Use account
XXin supplement to the username and password (deprecated).
- –d XX
Use the file
XXfor debug logging.
- –a
Use ASCII transfer type instead of binary.
- –t XX
Timeout after
XXseconds.
- –v/–V
Do (do not) use progress meters.
The default is to use progress meters if the output stream is a TTY.
- –f XX
Read the file
XXfor host, user, and password information.
- –c
Read from remote host and write locally to standard out.
- –C
Read from remote host and write locally to specified pathname.
- –A
Append to local files, instead of overwriting them.
- –z/–Z
Do (do not) try to resume transfers.
The default is to try to resume (–z).
- –E
Use regular (PORT) data connections.
- –F
Use passive (PASV) data connections.
The default is to use passive, but to fallback to
regular if the passive connection fails or times out.
- –DD
Delete remote file after successfully downloading it.
- –R
Recursive mode; copy whole directory trees.
- –T
Do not use automatic on–the–fly TAR mode for downloading whole directory trees.
ncftpgetuses TAR whenever possible since this usually preserves symbolic links
and file permissions.
TAR mode can also result in faster transfers for directories containing many
small files, since a single data connection can be used rather than an FTP
data connection for each small file.
The downside to using TAR is that it forces downloading of the whole directory,
even if you had previously downloaded a portion of it earlier, so you may
want to use this option if you want to resume downloading of a directory.
- –r XX
Redial a maximum of
XXtimes until connected to the remote FTP server.
- –b
Run in background (by submitting a batch job and then spawning
ncftpbatch).- –bb
Similar to
–boption, but only submits the batch job.
You will need to run
ncftpbatchfor the batch job to be processed.
This is useful if you already have a
ncftpbatchprocess running, or wish to have better control of when batch
jobs are processed.
For example,
if you wanted to do background processing of three
files all on the same remote server, it is more polite
to use just one
ncftpbatchprocess to process the three jobs sequentially, rather than
having three
ncftpbatchprocesses open three simultaneous FTP sessions to the same
server.
- –B XX
Try setting the TCP/IP socket buffer size to
XXbytes.
- –W XX
Send raw FTP command
XXafter logging in.
- –X XX
Send raw FTP command
XXafter each file transferred.
- –Y XX
Send raw FTP command
XXbefore logging out.
The
–W, –X, and –Yoptions are useful for advanced users who need to tweak
behavior on some servers.
For example, users accessing mainframes might need to send
some special SITE commands to set blocksize and record format information.
For these options, you can use them multiple times each if you need
to send multiple commands.
For the
–Xoption, you can use the cookie
%sto expand into the name of the file that was transferred.
- –o XX
Set advanced option
XX.
This option is used primarily for debugging.
It sets the value of an internal variable to an integer value.
An example usage would be:
–o useFEAT=0,useCLNT=1which in this case, disables use of the
FEAT command and enables the CLNT command.
The available variables include:
usePASV,
useSIZE,
useMDTM,
useREST,
useNLST_a,
useNLST_d,
useFEAT,
useMLSD,
useMLST,
useCLNT,
useHELP_SITE,
useSITE_UTIME,
STATfileParamWorks,
NLSTfileParamWorks,
require20,
allowProxyForPORT,
doNotGetStartCWD.
DESCRIPTION
The
purpose of
ncftpget
is to do file transfers from the command–line
without entering an interactive shell.
This lets you write shell scripts or other unattended
processes that can do FTP.
It is also useful for advanced users who
want to retrieve files from the shell command line without
entering an interactive FTP program such as
ncftp.
One particularly useful feature of this program is that
you can give it a
uniform resource locator
as the only argument and the program will download
that file.
You can then copy and paste from your web browser
or newsreader and use that URL.
Example:
$ cd /tmp
$ ncftpget ftp://ftp.ncftp.com/pub/ncftp/ncftp.tar.Z
$ zcat ncftp.tar.Z | tar xf –
By default the program tries to open the remote host
and login anonymously, but you can specify a username
and password information.
The
–u
option is used to specify the username to login as,
and the
–p
option is used to specify the password.
If you are running the program from the shell, you may
omit the
–p
option and the program will prompt you for the password.
Using the
–u
and
–p
options are not recommended, because your account information
is exposed to anyone who can see your shell script or your
process information. For example, someone using the
ps
program could see your password while the program runs.
You may use the
–f
option instead to specify a file with the account information.
However, this is still not secure because anyone who
has read access to the information file can see the
account information.
Nevertheless, if you choose to use the
–f
option the file should look something like this:
host sphygmomanometer.ncftp.com
user gleason
pass mypasswd
Don’t forget to change the permissions on this file
so no one else can read them.
The
–d
option is very useful when you are trying to diagnose
why a file transfer is failing.
It prints out the
entire FTP conversation to the file you specify, so
you can get an idea of what went wrong.
If you specify the special name
stdout
as the name of the debugging output file, the output
will instead print to the screen. Example:
$ ncftpget –d stdout bowser.nintendo.co.jp . /pub/README
220: FTP server ready.
Connected to bowser.nintendo.co.jp.
Cmd: USER anonymous
331: Guest login ok, send your complete e–mail address as password.
Cmd: PASS xxxxxxxx
230: Welcome!
Logged in to bowser.nintendo.co.jp as anonymous.
Cmd: TYPE I
200: Type set to I.
Cmd: PORT 192,168,9,37,6,76
200: PORT command successful.
Cmd: RETR /pub/README
550: /pub/README: File in use.
Cmd: QUIT
221: Goodbye.
Using ASCII mode is helpful when the text format of your host
differs from that of the remote host.
For example, if you are retrieving a .TXT file from
a Windows–based host to a UNIX system, you could use the
–a
flag which would use ASCII transfer mode so that the file
created on the UNIX system would be in the UNIX text
format instead of the MS–DOS text format.
You can retrieve an entire directory tree of files by
using the
–R
flag.
However, this will work only if the remote FTP server
is a UNIX server, or emulates UNIX’s list output.
Example:
$ ncftpget –R ftp.ncftp.com /tmp /pub/ncftp
This would create a /tmp/ncftp hierarchy.
DIAGNOSTICS
ncftpget
returns the following exit values:
- 0
Success.
- 1
Could not connect to remote host.
- 2
Could not connect to remote host – timed out.
- 3
Transfer failed.
- 4
Transfer failed – timed out.
- 5
Directory change failed.
- 6
Directory change failed – timed out.
- 7
Malformed URL.
- 8
Usage error.
- 9
Error in login configuration file.
- 10
Library initialization failed.
- 11
Session initialization failed.
AUTHOR
Mike Gleason, NcFTP Software (http://www.ncftp.com).
SEE ALSO
ncftpput(1),
ncftp(1),
ftp(1),
rcp(1),
tftp(1).
LibNcFTP (http://www.ncftp.com/libncftp/).