ftp - phpMan

FTP(1) BSD General Commands Manual FTP(1)

NAME
ftp - Internet file transfer program

SYNOPSIS
ftp [-pinegvd] [host]
pftp [-inegvd] [host]

DESCRIPTION
Ftp is the user interface to the Internet standard File Transfer Protocol. The pro-
gram allows a user to transfer files to and from a remote network site.

Options may be specified at the command line, or to the command interpreter.

-p Use passive mode for data transfers. Allows use of ftp in environments where a
firewall prevents connections from the outside world back to the client
machine. Requires that the ftp server support the PASV command. This is the
default now for all clients (ftp and pftp) due to security concerns using the
PORT transfer mode. The flag is kept for compatibility only and has no effect
anymore.

-i Turns off interactive prompting during multiple file transfers.

-n Restrains ftp from attempting “auto-login” upon initial connection. If auto-
login is enabled, ftp will check the .netrc (see netrc(5)) 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.

-e Disables command editing and history support, if it was compiled into the ftp
executable. Otherwise, does nothing.

-g Disables file name globbing.

-v Verbose option forces ftp to show all responses from the remote server, as well
as report on data transfer statistics.

-d Enables debugging.

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 argu-
ments, 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 com-
pleted.

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 mget 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 file-name
Change the permission modes of the file file-name on the remote sytem to
mode.

close Terminate the FTP session with the remote server, and return to the com-
mand 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.

debug [debug-value]
Toggle debugging mode. If an optional 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 ‘-->’

dir [remote-directory] [local-file]
Print a listing of the directory contents in the directory,
remote-directory, and, optionally, placing the output in local-file. 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 directory is specified, the current working directory on the remote
machine is used. If no local file is specified, or local-file is -, out-
put comes to the terminal.

disconnect A synonym for close.

form format
Set the file transfer form to format. The default format is “file”.

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 and mput. 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 and mget,
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 and mput 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 Toggle hash-sign (‘‘#’’) printing for each data block transferred. The
size of a data block is 1024 bytes.

help [command]
Print an informative message about the meaning of command. If no argu-
ment 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 ommitted, the current inactivity timer is printed.

lcd [directory]
Change the working directory on the local machine. If no directory is
specified, the user’s home directory is used.

ls [remote-directory] [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’. (See also nlist.) If remote-directory is left
unspecified, the current working directory is used. If interactive
prompting is on, ftp will prompt the user to verify that the last argu-
ment is indeed the target local file for receiving ls output. If no
local file is specified, or if local-file is ‘-’, the output is sent to
the terminal.

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. Macros remain
defined until a close command is executed. The macro processor inter-
prets ‘$’ and ‘\’ as special characters. A ‘$’ followed by a number (or
numbers) is replaced by the corresponding argument on the macro invoca-
tion command line. A ‘$’ followed by an ‘i’ signals that macro processor
that the executing macro is to be looped. On the first pass ‘$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 argu-
ment 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 direc-
tory, 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 nlist, 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.

mode [mode-name]
Set the file transfer mode to mode-name. The default mode is “stream”
mode.

modtime file-name
Show the last modification time of the file on the remote machine.

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 file-
name expansion. Resulting file names will then be processed according to
ntrans and nmap settings.

newer file-name [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-directory] [local-file]
Print a list of the files in a directory on the remote machine. If
remote-directory 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
nlist output. If no local file is specified, or if local-file is -, the
output is sent to the terminal.

nmap [inpattern outpattern]
Set or unset the filename mapping mechanism. If no arguments are speci-
fied, the filename mapping mechanism is unset. If arguments are speci-
fied, 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 com-
mands 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 file-
names (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 val-
ues. 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 replace by the origi-
nal 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 argu-
ments 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 speci-
fied 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 auto-login option is on (default),
ftp will also attempt to automatically log the user in to the FTP server
(see below).

prompt Toggle interactive prompting. Interactive prompting occurs during multi-
ple 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.

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 connec-
tion. 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 con-
trol connection. Third party file transfers depend upon support of the
ftp protocol PASV command by the server on the secondary control connec-
tion.

put local-file [remote-file]
Store a local file on the remote machine. If remote-file is left unspec-
ified, 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.

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.

remotehelp [command-name]
Request help from the remote FTP server. If a command-name is specified
it is supplied to the server as well.

remotestatus [file-name]
With no arguments, show status of remote machine. If file-name is speci-
fied, show status of file-name on remote machine.

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.

rmdir directory-name
Delete a directory on the 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, indi-
cate they’ve been accepted.

site arg1 arg2 ...
The arguments specified are sent, verbatim, to the remote FTP server as a
SITE command.

size file-name
Return size of file-name on remote machine.

status Show the current status of ftp.

struct [struct-name]
Set the file transfer structure to struct-name. By default “stream”
structure is used.

sunique Toggle storing of files on remote machine under unique file names.
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.

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
ommitted, the current umask is printed.

user user-name [password] [account]
Identify yourself to the remote FTP server. If the password is not spec-
ified 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” dis-
abled, 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.

? [command]
A synonym for help.

Command arguments which have embedded spaces may be quoted with quote ‘"’ marks.

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
a 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,
an ‘ftp>’ prompt will not appear until the remote server has completed sending the
requested file.

The terminal interrupt key sequence will be ignored when ftp has completed any local
processing and is awaiting a reply from the remote server. A long delay in this mode
may result from the ABOR processing described above, or from unexpected behavior by
the remote server, including violations of the ftp protocol. If the delay results
from unexpected remote server behavior, the local ftp program must be killed by hand.

FILE NAMING CONVENTIONS
Files specified as arguments to ftp commands are processed according to the following
rules.

1. If the file name ‘-’ is specified, the stdin (for reading) or stdout (for writ-
ing) is used.

2. 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 par-
ticularly useful example of this mechanism is: “dir more”.

3. Failing the above checks, if ‘‘globbing’’ is enabled, local file names are
expanded according to the rules used in the csh(1); c.f. the glob command. If
the ftp command expects a single local file (.e.g. put), only the first file-
name generated by the "globbing" operation is used.

4. 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.

5. 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.

ENVIRONMENT
Ftp utilizes the following environment variables.

HOME For default location of a .netrc file, if one exists.

SHELL For default shell.