The File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

Simply put, FTP is a way to get a file from one place to another. With a few simple commands, you can download files, programs and even operating systems. (Downloading OS's takes a very long time, for the record.)

There are many FTP programs out there, many with nice, shiny GUI interfaces. All of the browsers that I have used even have download FTP capabilities built in. You don't need these. For FTP, all you need is a computer on the internet, whether it's a dial-in UNIX shell or windows with a PPP connection. Text based FTP is much faster, and all you need to know is a few simple commands.

How to FTP

For example purposes, I will FTP to Netscape and download something. While you can download from commercial sites, few will let you upload.

The first thing that you want to do is make sure that you are in the directory that you want the files to be loaded to or from. It's much easier to plan ahead.

Now, from the command prompt, type ftp ftp.netscape.com.

[otto@shell internet]$ ftp ftp.netscape.com  
220 ftp105 SGI 1.5: FTP server (Version wu-2.4.2-academ[BETA-17](20) Sat
Jan 23
23:20:31 PST 1999) ready.
Name (ftp.netscape.com:otto):  

This is where you log in. If you are not employed by, a friend of or paying the owner of the ftp site, chances are you will not have a login for the site. This means that you will have to access the site anonymously. Many sites allow anonymous ftp. Many do not. Big companies, educational institutions and software distributors usually do. Why not try it? Log in either as anonymous or ftp.

Name (ftp.netscape.com:otto): anonymous
331 Guest login ok, send your complete e-mail address as password.
Password: 

230-Welcome to the Netscape Communications Corporation FTP server.
230-
230-If you have any odd problems, try logging in with a minus sign (-)
230-as the first character of your password.  This will turn off a feature
230-that may be confusing your ftp client program.
230-
230-Please send any questions, comments, or problem reports about
230-this server to ftp@netscape.com.
230-
230-***********  October 13, 1995  **********
230-Private ftp is now only on ftp1.netscape.com.  Anonymous is supported
on
230-ftp 2 through 8.  If you are accessing a named account please use
ftp1.
230-
230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply.
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp>  

The first thing that you always want to do when you log in is type binary at the prompt.

ftp> binary
200 Type set to I. 

Binary and ASCII are the two transfer types that ftp uses. Binary is more reliable, and the only way you can transfer any non text based file. Sure, it's a little slower, but trust me, there's nothing worse than downloading a file for an hour to have it not work because you were not using binary mode.

Help

If you type help at the prompt, this is what you get.

                debug           mdir            sendport        site
$               dir             mget            put             size
account         disconnect      mkdir           pwd             status
append          exit            mls             quit            struct
ascii           form            mode            quote           system
bell            get             modtime         recv            sunique
binary          glob            mput            reget           tenex
bye             hash            newer           rstatus         tick
case            help            nmap            rhelp           trace
cd              idle            nlist           rename          type
cdup            image           ntrans          reset           user
chmod           lcd             open            restart         umask
close           ls              prompt          rmdir           verbose
cr              macdef          passive         runique         ?
delete          mdelete         proxy           send      

These are all of the commands that you can use in FTP. Don't worry, you don't need to know them all. Just notice that there are some that are the same except that there's an m in front of one; delete and mdelete, get and mget, put and mput. You get the picture. When there is an m in front of the command, it means multiple files. You should use the m command whenever you are using wildcards, like *. For an example, if I want to download all of the files in a directory that start with a t, I type mget t*.*.

If you would like more in-depth help on a command, type help and then the command name.

ftp> help mget
mget            get multiple files
ftp> help get
get             receive file
ftp> help ls
ls              list contents of remote directory
ftp> help put
put             send one file
ftp> help mput
mput            send multiple files
ftp> help bye
bye             terminate ftp session and exit
ftp> 

Okay, it's not very verbose, but it really is all you need to know.

Commands

The first command that we will look at is ls. Ls gives you a list of the files and directories of the directory that you are ftping into. It is a lot like the dir command in DOS.

Type ls at the prompt.

200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls.
total 8
drwxr-xr-x    7 root     other         71 May  4  1999 .
drwxr-xr-x    7 root     other         71 May  4  1999 ..
d--x--x--x    2 root     other         20 Apr 20  1999 bin
dr-xr-xr-x    2 root     other         22 Apr 20  1999 dev
d--x--x--x    2 root     other         78 Apr 20  1999 etc
dr-xr-xr-x    2 root     other         60 May  4  1999 lib32
drwxr-xr-x   23 888      999         4096 Oct  6 15:31 pub
226 Transfer complete.
ftp>        

The first thing that you see is an odd (if you're unfamiliar with unix) string of letters. For the last file listed, pub, you get drwxr-xr-x. The first letter is a d. This simply means that it's a directory, or folder, where other files are held. The other 9 letters tell you who can do what to the directory. The last three letters, r-x are the ones that are important to us. This means that anyone can go into the directory, they just can't change anything.

The last column lists the file name. Type cd pub and it will take you to pub, the public folder.

After typing ls to get another directory listing, you decide to download the readme file. Read me's usually contain some directions for using the ftp site, notes about the organization, info about what is contained in the directory it's in, and other miscellaneous information. generally, you will want to read these, especially if you are having problems.

There are 2 commands that you can use to get the file. Because it is a single file, Readme.htm, you can use get Readme.htm. In truth, that will work, but if you are lazy like me, you will want to use wildcards.

The wildcard that I always use is *. There are others, of course, but I've used them personally once or twice in my life, so lets keep it simple and just talk about the *. * means that the computer should look for the file name with any amount of letters where the star is. If you type Rea*, it could mean Readme, Readme1, Reaper, or any other file that starts with a Rea.

In order to use wildcards, you must use the multiple file get command, "mget".

ftp> mget Rea*.htm
mget ReadMe.htm?   

Now type a y to verify that you want the file.

200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for ReadMe.htm (34832 bytes).
226 Transfer complete.
34832 bytes received in 1.74 secs (20 Kbytes/sec) 

The file is now in the directory that you were on on your local machine. Now log off by typing bye.

ftp> bye
221 Goodbye.

Uploading is the exact same process. Keep it easy on yourself, get into the right directory before ftping. Follow the same process, using the commands put and mput instead of get.

When things go wrong

After I download the file it doesn't work! This happens to me constantly. I spend an hour downloading a file only to find that it does nothing when I try to run it. The problem is, I always forget to put it in binary mode, without fail. Ascii mode only works for things like text files, html documents and the few other things in this world that are text based. If it turns out that the binary thing is not the problem, you may want to try redownloading it. Line noise, someone picking up the phone while you are downloading, and other conditions can cause the file not to transfer right. If it still doesn't work after 2 tries, the file quite possibly could be bad. Try downloading something else. If it doesn't work, you may want to have a tech look at your computer, the modem may be bad.

Whenever I push backspace, I get a bunch of ^h's all over the place. Again, this is a simply solved problem that I always do. Don't push backspace, push delete. The backspace key is not set up as a default in the UNIX environment. So, when you are logging in or using ftp, you can not use the backspace. This problem has generally been solved for any other task. Don't worry about it, just don't use it.

I type everything correctly, it just can't find the file or won't take the command. UNIX, including the FTP program, is case sensitive. Make sure that your caps lock is off, and type the file EXACTLY how it is written. If the file is called Readme.HTM, calling it README.HTM, readme.htm, or even Readme.htm will not work. For commands in FTP, all of them are lowercase, and will not work if you type them any other way.

I forgot to put it in the right directory before I FTP'ed in. How do I change directory without logging out and back in? You use the lcd command. If you type lcd, it will tell you what directory you are in. lcd .. will take you to the next higher directory and lcd directoryname will take you to another directory. Of course, this is very limited, so that's why I say get to the right directory first.

I can't change to a directory/download a file because there's a space in the file name. The only solution to this problem is to write the administrator of the site and complain that they don't make their files accessible to everyone. Of course, this letter of complaint will not be very successful if you write it to ftp.microsoft.com.

• You can check your mail through Pine.
• You can check out the newsgroups through tin.
• While you're at it, you should fiddle around with some miscellaneous commands and programs.