phpied.com

Since I switched to Mac I need to learn a bunch of stuff I was taking for granted for years. Recently I needed to upload a bigger file or two to my server and scp is not the tool for the job. So instead of starting a hunt for a decent free FTP client, I tried the good old command line.

Turns out it's much easier to FTP files from the command line than I would think.

Connecting to the server

$ ftp phpied.com
Connected to phpied.com.
220---------- Welcome to Pure-FTPd [TLS] ----------
220-You are user number 1 of 50 allowed.
220-Local time is now 02:17. Server port: 21.
220-IPv6 connections are also welcome on this server.
220 You will be disconnected after 15 minutes of inactivity.
Name (phpied.com:stoyan): myusername
331 User myusername OK. Password required
Password:

After supplying your credentials you're in and you have an inviting ftp> prompt:

230 OK. Current restricted directory is /
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp>

So what do you do here? You can list available commands with
ftp> help

You can navigate with cd (good old "change directory")

ftp> cd www/phpied.com/files
250 OK. Current directory is /www/phpied.com/files

You can list the contents of a remote directory with ls or dir.

And finally you can copy files from your desktop to the remote machine. You don't copy files, you PUT them. You're rewarded with a nice progress indicator.

ftp> put src.zip 
local: src.zip remote: src.zip
229 Entering Extended Passive Mode (|||59237|)
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for src.zip
 10% |***                                  |   511 KB   64.00 KB/s    01:09 ETA

later...

ftp> put src.zip
local: src.zip remote: src.zip
229 Entering Extended Passive Mode (|||59237|)
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for src.zip
 93% |**********************************   |  4607 KB   45.62 KB/s    00:07 ETA

finally...

ftp> put src.zip
local: src.zip remote: src.zip
229 Entering Extended Passive Mode (|||59237|)
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for src.zip
100% |*************************************|  4938 KB   44.73 KB/s    00:00 ETA
226 Transfer complete.
5056569 bytes sent in 01:53 (43.55 KB/s)

And then, bye-bye:

ftp> quit
221 Goodbye.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 16th, 2009 and is filed under tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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