Tribblix: manual page: ncftpget.1

ncftpget(1) User Commands ncftpget(1)

NAME

ncftpget - Internet file transfer program for scripts

SYNOPSIS

ncftpget [options] remote-host local-directory remote-files...

ncftpget [options] bookmark-name 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 XX instead of anonymous.

-p XX Use password XX with the username.

-P XX Use port number XX instead of the default FTP service port
(21).

-j XX Use account XX in supplement to the username and password
(deprecated).

-d XX Use the file XX for debug logging.

-a Use ASCII transfer type instead of binary.

-t XX Timeout after XX seconds.

-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 XX for 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. ncftpget uses 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 XX times until connected to the remote
FTP server.

-b Run in background (by submitting a batch job and then
spawning ncftpbatch).

-bb Similar to -b option, but only submits the batch job. You
will need to run ncftpbatch for the batch job to be
processed. This is useful if you already have a ncftpbatch
process 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 ncftpbatch process to process the three jobs
sequentially, rather than having three ncftpbatch processes
open three simultaneous FTP sessions to the same server.

-B XX Try setting the TCP/IP socket buffer size to XX bytes.

-W XX Send raw FTP command XX after logging in.

-X XX Send raw FTP command XX after each file transferred.

-Y XX Send raw FTP command XX before logging out.

The -W, -X, and -Y options 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 -X option, you
can use the cookie %s to 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=1 which 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