Linux connect to ftp server

Connecting to FTP via the Linux command line

I need to upload files via FTP from the command line. I have this information: a URL, a username, a password, a port, and the fact that I am supposed to use passive mode. How do I upload a file given this information? Note that I am having to do this from a script, so I need to be able to enter this information automatically.

ftp happens do be one FTP client. Others might be better suited depending on what the user wants. Simply linking to a man page isn’t exactly helpful.

3 Answers 3

There’s many CLI (command line) clients out there. Most common is simply ftp . You’ve got , , , and «passive mode». Using ftp you should do:

-p switch means «use passive mode». Then you’ll be asked about your username and password. After successful login (server let you know about that), you are able to give some commands. Type help and press «enter» to get list of commands available. You can use e.g. cd , ls , mkdir ftp commands to change working directory (on the server), list its contents and create a new directory. If before running ftp you were in the same directory as you files you want to send, you can use put or mput command to start actual transfer. First command sends one file, second multiple files using globbing (e.g. mput *pdf will send all pdf files in current directory). To get simple help about command you can use help from within ftp app. I’d say that’s enough for starters. For the rest use man ftp or info ftp . To end ftp session type bye . There are other ways to do that but I think this one is just elegant :).

As for the other clients, some interesting choices were pointed here, but I personally use lftp . It’s just solid, good, flexible and easy to use ftp client. If you prefer more visual approach while still being under command line, you can go for mc or «Midnight Command». It’s general application file manager utilizing Norton Commander paradigm, but can be also used to access ftp servers.

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Using FTP Command to Transfer Files

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1. Overview

In this tutorial, we’ll learn how to use the ftp command in Linux to transfer files between two systems. We can use the ftp command to transfer files from server to client and also from client to server.

FTP doesn’t use encryption. In other words, user credentials (username and password) and file data are sent as plain text. As a result, the connection between the client and the server is vulnerable to different network attacks such as sniffing and spoofing attacks. For more security, we can use SFTP or FTPS since they use encryption.

2. Connecting to the FTP Server

To connect to the FTP server, we can use this command:

After connecting, it will ask us to enter the username and the password. After that, it gives us the ftp> prompt:

$ ftp localhost Connected to localhost. 220 (vsFTPd 3.0.3) Name (localhost:baeldung): 331 Please specify the password. Password: 230 Login successful. Remote system type is UNIX. Using binary mode to transfer files. ftp> 

We are now successfully connected to the FTP server.

3. Useful Commands

After connecting to the FTP server, we can run these commands:

Now let’s take a quick look at their usage.

3.1. Downloading Files

We can use get and mget to download a file from the FTP server:

ftp> ls 200 EPRT command successful. Consider using EPSV. 150 Here comes the directory listing. -rw-rw-r-- 1 1000 1000 180103 Apr 24 08:29 file.pdf 226 Directory send OK. ftp> get file.pdf local: file.pdf remote: file.pdf 200 EPRT command successful. Consider using EPSV. 150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for file.pdf (180103 bytes). 226 Transfer complete. 180103 bytes received in 0.00 secs (109.0537 MB/s)

We have successfully downloaded file.pdf.

3.2. Uploading Files

We can use the put and mput commands to upload single or multiple files to the FTP server, respectively:

These upload the file from the current working directory from the local to the remote server.

3.3. Creating/Removing a Directory

We can use mkdir to create a new directory:

And we can use rmdir to remove a directory:

3.4. Deleting a File

We can use delete or mdelete to remove files:

4. Exiting the Prompt

After we are done transferring files, we can use exit or bye to exit:

5. Copy a Directory to the Server

In this section, we’ll learn an advanced use case of copying an entire directory recursively to the server.

5.1. Understanding the Scenario

First, let’s start by looking into the directory structure in a tree format using the exa command:

$ exa --tree my_dir my_dir ├── f1.txt ├── f2.txt └── my_sub_dir ├── f3.txt └── f4.txt

Now, let’s see if we can use the mput command to copy all the files under the my_dir directory to the FTP server:

ftp> mput my_dir local: my_dir remote: my_dir my_dir: not a plain file.

We can see that our attempt failed because the mput command supports only files, not directories.

Next, let’s also see if we can use the * wildcard in the file path to copy files after creating the my_dir directory manually:

ftp> mkdir my_dir; mput my_dir/*; usage: mkdir directory-name ftp> mkdir my_dir 257 "/my_dir" created ftp> mput my_dir/* local: my_dir/f1.txt remote: my_dir/f1.txt 229 Entering Extended Passive Mode (|||40008|) 150 Ok to send data. 100% |******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************| 3 6.36 KiB/s 00:00 ETA226 Transfer complete. 3 bytes sent in 00:00 (0.45 KiB/s) local: my_dir/f2.txt remote: my_dir/f2.txt 229 Entering Extended Passive Mode (|||40003|) 150 Ok to send data. 100% |******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************| 3 10.50 KiB/s 00:00 ETA226 Transfer complete. 3 bytes sent in 00:00 (0.98 KiB/s) local: my_dir/my_sub_dir remote: my_dir/my_sub_dir my_dir/my_sub_dir: not a plain file. ftp>

Great! We got some success this time, wherein my_dir/f1.txt and my_dir/f2.txt files were transferred. However, it couldn’t copy the my_sub_dir subdirectory and the files under it.

In the next section, we’ll develop a script to solve this use case, as there’s no direct way to copy a complete directory recursively to an FTP server.

5.2. Creating Copy Script

To solve the use case, we must traverse through the directory to generate a set of FTP commands to replicate the entire directory structure from the local to the remote FTP server.

First, let’s create the copy.sh Bash script and initialize the src_dirs and files variables as an array of absolute paths for the source directories and files, respectively:

$ cat copy.sh #!/bin/bash SRC_DIRECTORY="$(realpath my_dir)" PREFIX="$(dirname $SRC_DIRECTORY)/" MKDIR_CMD="" PUT_FILE_CMD="" IFS=$'\n' src_dirs=($(find $SRC_DIRECTORY | tail -n +2 | xargs -n 1 dirname | sort | uniq)) IFS=$'\n' files=($(find $SRC_DIRECTORY -type f))

We must note that SRC_DIRECTORY is initialized as the absolute path of the my_dir directory. Further, the PREFIX variable denotes the absolute path of my_dir‘s parent directory.

Next, let’s iterate over the src_dirs and files arrays to derive the directory and file paths relative to the $PREFIX path:

for src_dir in "$" do DIR="$" MKDIR_CMD="$mkdir $\n" done echo -e "$MKDIR_CMD" for my_file in "$" do file_relative_path="$" PUT_FILE_CMD="$put $\n" done echo -e "$PUT_FILE_CMD"

It’s important to observe that we used these loops to generate the values in the MKDIR_CMD and the PUT_FILE_CMD variables.

Finally, let’s add code to connect to the FTP server and execute the FTP commands stored in $MKDIR_CMD and $PUT_FILE_CMD:

That’s it! The copy script is now ready. However, before we see it in action, let’s note that we switched the current directory to the parent directory of the my_dir directory because all paths are relative to it.

5.3. Copy Script in Action

Before we can execute the copy.sh script, we need to give execution permissions for the current user using the chmod command:

Now, let’s go ahead and run the script:

$ ./copy.sh mkdir my_dir mkdir my_dir/my_sub_dir put my_dir/f1.txt put my_dir/my_sub_dir/f4.txt put my_dir/my_sub_dir/f3.txt put my_dir/f2.txt Connected to 127.0.0.1. 220 FTP Server 331 Please specify the password. 230 Login successful. Remote system type is UNIX. Using binary mode to transfer files. 200 Switching to Binary mode. Interactive mode off. 257 "/my_dir" created 257 "/my_dir/my_sub_dir" created local: my_dir/f1.txt remote: my_dir/f1.txt 229 Entering Extended Passive Mode (|||40005|) 150 Ok to send data. 100% |******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************| 3 15.25 KiB/s 00:00 ETA226 Transfer complete. 3 bytes sent in 00:00 (2.26 KiB/s) local: my_dir/my_sub_dir/f4.txt remote: my_dir/my_sub_dir/f4.txt 229 Entering Extended Passive Mode (|||40004|) 150 Ok to send data. 100% |******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************| 3 19.40 KiB/s 00:00 ETA226 Transfer complete. 3 bytes sent in 00:00 (2.50 KiB/s) local: my_dir/my_sub_dir/f3.txt remote: my_dir/my_sub_dir/f3.txt 229 Entering Extended Passive Mode (|||40004|) 150 Ok to send data. 100% |******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************| 3 14.94 KiB/s 00:00 ETA226 Transfer complete. 3 bytes sent in 00:00 (2.16 KiB/s) local: my_dir/f2.txt remote: my_dir/f2.txt 229 Entering Extended Passive Mode (|||40009|) 150 Ok to send data. 100% |******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************| 3 15.75 KiB/s 00:00 ETA226 Transfer complete. 3 bytes sent in 00:00 (3.09 KiB/s) 221 Goodbye.

Great, it looks like our script worked. Further, we can also note the commands stored in the MKDIR_CMD and PUT_FILE_CMD variables that helped us achieve this.

Finally, we can verify this by connecting to the FTP server and executing the ls command:

% ftp ftp://ftpuser:[email protected]:21 Connected to 127.0.0.1. 220 FTP Server 331 Please specify the password. 230 Login successful. Remote system type is UNIX. Using binary mode to transfer files. 200 Switching to Binary mode. ftp> ls my_dir 229 Entering Extended Passive Mode (|||40002|) 150 Here comes the directory listing. -rw-r--r-- 1 ftp ftp 3 Mar 21 14:13 f1.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 ftp ftp 3 Mar 21 14:13 f2.txt drwxr-sr-x 2 ftp ftp 4096 Mar 21 14:13 my_sub_dir 226 Directory send OK. ftp> ls my_dir/my_sub_dir 229 Entering Extended Passive Mode (|||40008|) 150 Here comes the directory listing. -rw-r--r-- 1 ftp ftp 3 Mar 21 14:13 f3.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 ftp ftp 3 Mar 21 14:13 f4.txt 226 Directory send OK. ftp>

6. Conclusion

In this article, we learned how to connect to an FTP server, run several commands, and send files to/from the FTP server.

Additionally, we solved the use case of copying an entire directory recursively from the local to the remote FTP server by writing a Bash script.

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