MacOS – Download a file from a FTP server to a specific location

command linemacosterminal

I know I can get to a FTP location by accessing:

open ftp://user:pass@my_ftp_server/my_file

This will download the file in the Downloads folder.

How can I tell FTP tp download the file to a specific location I want?

I am looking for something like:

open ftp://user:pass@my_ftp_server/my_file=/tmp/fileDownloadedFromFtp

Best Answer

Use curl instead of open :-)

curl 'ftp://user:pass@my_ftp_server/my_file' > '/tmp/fileDownloadedFromFtp'
curl -o '/tmp/fileDownloadedFromFtp' 'ftp://user:pass@my_ftp_server/my_file'
(cd /tmp && curl -O 'ftp://user:pass@my_ftp_server/my_file')

curl by default dumps the received data on standard output, so the first option just uses output redirection to store it. The second option explicitely sets the target directory/name, the third changes to the target directory first and then has curl store the data into a file named the same way as on the source side.

If you want to avoid that username/password are visible to other users by running ps (or by looking into your shell history)

create a text file .netrc in your home directory with the following content (replace my_ftp_server, user, pass with the real values)
```
machine my_ftp_server login user password pass
```
run chmod 600 ~/.netrc
Use curl -n ...

Related Solutions

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 :)

MacOS – How to setup FTP server in Mac OS X Lion Server

Please refer to the answer at Create a Remote Only User in OS X.

The last part of that post will use bindfs to mount a user privileged only folder. See below. The whole instruction set is on the blog post referenced or just look at both posts. If someone wants me to duplicate that other post here let me know.

Getting in is one thing. Now you have to mount the folder you want to use. Unfortunately you can't use a symlink inside of a chroot jail. This is where MacPorts is your best friend. I don't know why I've never seen fit to install this before. After installation just issue the following commands.

sudo port install fuse4x
sudo port install fuse4x bindfs

You might have to restart. Now with an empty folder created in /chroot/user you can mount --bind to a folder outside of the chroot jail. For example

sudo /opt/local/bin/bindfs -u user /Library/WebServer/Documents/mysite/yourfolder /chroot/user/scratchpad

So far this seems to work here.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

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

MacOS – How to setup FTP server in Mac OS X Lion Server

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