Mac Command-Line FTP – How to FTP File to Specific Path on Server

command lineftpmac

I try to FTP a file with a one liner in a shell from a mac to a folder on my server.
Doing the same in the FTP-Shell is not a problem for me, but doing this in one line is not possible to me.

I even do not succeed with the following simple connecttest, which I guess is standard on every other system:

ftp name:password@mysite

How to transfer a file in one commandline with following info?

filename: <file>
server:<server>
username:<username>
password:<password>
pathonserver:<path>

ftp <username>:<password>@<server> "cd <path>;put <file>" ?

Best Answer

To upload a file to the specific path using ftp command you have to:

ftp -u ftp://<user>:<pass>@<server>/<path> /path/to/file

From man ftp:

 -u URL file [...]
             Upload files on the command line to URL where URL is one of
             the ftp URL types as supported by auto-fetch (with an
             optional target filename for single file uploads), and file
             is one or more local files to be uploaded.

For auto-fetch URLs also look into man ftp under AUTO-FETCHING FILES section.

Related Solutions

OS X Server FTP server

I suggest you use what comes with OSX, namely sftp/scp, included with every OSX since the age of dawn.

Enable SSH in the sharing (Remote Login), configure what users have access and then try to use sftp from the Terminal (if you are familiar with it). Try

man sftp

to see the help.

DESCRIPTION sftp is an interactive file transfer program, similar to ftp(1), which performs all operations over an encrypted ssh(1) transport.

You have the benefits of "ftp-like" plus everything is encrypted.

If you still want to go ahead and use ftp, I suggest you take a look at ftpd conf file, located in /etc/ftpd.conf and /etc/ftpusers

In any case, take a look at the man page for ftpd.conf and ftpusers:

man ftpd.conf
man ftpusers

…to see other options you can add there (because the default one will be most likely empty or with little things in it).

There's no pretty program to configure FTP on OSX (there is on the Server version as far as I can remember).

Please note that FTP is not a very secure protocol by default and hence it should be running inside a chroot. (hint: man ftpchroot).

How to use FTP via the command line to download all files

The curl program could help you download an FTP file, but it specializes in one-off URLs (http, ftp, etc). It is possible to use Perl to script something up to list then download, but its much easier to use wget!

However, wget is not a standard program of OSX so you will need to manually download, compile, and install it (relatively easy task, as long as you have Xcode installed.)

Install Xcode from the App Store.
Download wget source
Open a Terminal into the directory you saved the source.

Run the following commands:

    $ tar xfvz wget-latest.tar.gz
    $ cd wget-*
    $ ./configure && make

The wget binary will be produced in a src subdirectory. From here you can run the binary directly as ./src/wget or install into /usr/local/bin:

    $ sudo make install

Now, you only need to run wget -r ftp://username:passwd@server/path/to/download and your FTP site will be recursively downloaded from that path!

Just remember that the /path/to/download is relative to the username you login with... and FTP passwords are notoriously unsecure :)

Best Answer

Related Solutions

OS X Server FTP server

How to use FTP via the command line to download all files

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