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ncftp, wget

ncftp simply doesn't like to do recursive GETs. It'll churn along happily until it hits some random file and then timeout. If I restart the same command it'll sometimes get further and timeout, sometimes timeout sooner. Oh how I wish I could find a linux FTP client that doesn't suck half the time. I still entertain notions of writing my own someday. I know pretty well how I want the UI to work, it's the backend that I always get hung up on. I'm not going to re-implement the FTP protocol. Ruby has a nice FTP library but it seems somewhat limited in certain ways. Or else I haven't delved into it enough.

Either way. I'm going to use wget for my recursive FTP downloads from now on. Probably should've done that to begin with.

wget -r -x --ftp-user USERNAME  --ftp-password PASSWORD 'ftp://SERVER/DIRECTORY/*'

I at first was upset about having my FTP password lying around on the command line / process list but then I realized that I'm the only person who uses now and who will ever use this computer. I'll delete it from ~/.bash_history after I'm done. If someone is psing my process list right now, I have much bigger problems than having them gank my FTP password.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, February 11th, 2007 at 12:36 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Or subscribe to comments below to receive email notifications. This post is open for commenting. Pinging is currently not allowed.

3 Responses to “ncftp, wget”

  1. February 11th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
    Quoth Jan-Hendrik Zab:

    Hey,
    have you ever tried lftp or yafc? I haven't got any problems with them so far. :)

  2. February 11th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
    Quoth Brian:

    Thank you very much for the suggestion. I am going to give yafc an extended try.

  3. October 5th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
    Quoth Levi Figueira:

    As to the password, try doing this:
    wget -rx ‘ftp://user:pass@host.com'

    wget will turn it into:
    ftp://user:*password*@host.com

    on both screen and logs! ;)

    Cheers,
    ~Levi F.

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