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FTP(1) General Commands Manual FTP(1) NAME ftp - internet file transfer program SYNOPSIS ftp [ option ... ] [ host ] pftp [ option ... ] [ host ] DESCRIPTION Ftp transfers files to and from a remote network host computer via the Internet file transfer protocol. To reach outside Internet sites from v10 machines, prefix the Internet host name with from System V ma- chines, use pftp. After attempting to connect to the remote host, if any, ftp enters its command interpreter and prompts for instructions. The following commands are recognized: ! [ command [ args ] ] Invoke an interactive shell on the local machine. If there are arguments, the first is taken to be a command to execute di- rectly, with the rest of the arguments as its arguments. $ macro-name [ args ] Execute the macro macro-name that was defined with the macdef command. Arguments are passed to the macro unglobbed. account [ passwd ] Supply a supplemental password required by a remote system for access to resources once a login has been successfully com- pleted. If no argument is included, the user will be prompted for an account password in a non-echoing input mode. append local-file [ remote-file ] Append a local file to a file on the remote machine. If a re- mote-file is not specified, the local file name is used subject to altering ntrans or nmap . File transfer uses the current settings for type, format, mode, and structure. ascii Set the file transfer type to network ASCII. This is the de- fault type. bell Arrange that a bell be sounded after each file transfer command is completed. binary Set the file transfer type to support binary image transfer. bye Terminate the session. An end of file will also terminate the session. case Toggle remote computer file name case mapping during mget com- mands. When case is on (default is off), remote computer file names with all letters in upper case are written in the local directory with the letters mapped to lower case. cd remote-directory Change the working directory on the remote machine to remote-di- rectory. cdup Change the remote machine working directory to the parent of the current remote machine working directory. close Terminate the session. Any defined macros are erased. cr Toggle carriage return stripping during ascii type file re- trieval. Records are denoted by a carriage return/linefeed se- quence during ascii type file transfer. When cr is on (the de- fault), carriage returns are stripped from this sequence to con- form with the UNIX single linefeed record delimiter. Records on non-UNIX remote systems may contain single linefeeds; when an ascii type transfer is made, these linefeeds may be distin- guished from a record delimiter only when cr is off. delete remote-file Delete the file remote-file on the remote machine. debug [ debug-level ] Toggle debugging or set the debugging level. When debugging is on, ftp prints each command sent to the remote machine, preceded by the string dir [ remote-directory ] [ local-file ] Place in local-file a listing of the contents of remote-direc- tory. If local-file is or absent send output to the terminal. If is on, ftp asks for local-file to be confirmed. If no re- mote-directory is specified, the current working directory on the remote machine is used. disconnect A synonym for close. form format Set the file transfer form to format. The default format is get remote-file [ local-file ] Retrieve the remote-file and store it on the local machine. If the local file name is not specified, it is given the same name it has on the remote machine, subject to altering by case, ntrans, and nmap settings. The current settings for type, form, mode, and structure are used while transferring the file. glob Toggle filename expansion for mdelete, mget, and mput. If glob- bing is turned off with glob, the file name arguments are taken literally and not expanded. Globbing for mput is done as in csh(1). For mdelete and mget, ach remote file name is expanded separately on the remote machine and the lists are not merged. Expansion of a directory may be different from expansion of the name of an ordinary file, depending on the foreign operating system and FTP server. It may be previewed by doing `mls re- mote-files -'. Note: mget and mput are not meant to transfer entire directory subtrees of files. That can be done by trans- ferring a tar(1) archive of the subtree (in binary mode). hash Toggle hash-sign (#) printing for each data block transferred. The size of a data block is 1024 bytes. help [ command ] Print an informative message about the meaning of command. If no argument is given, ftp prints a list of the known commands. lcd [ directory ] Change the working directory on the local machine. If no direc- tory is specified, the user's home directory is used. ls [ remote-directory ] [ local-file ] List in local-file the contents of a directory on the remote ma- chine. If local-file is or absent, the output is sent to the terminal. The form of the list depends on the remote server; most UNIX systems will produce output from the command (See also nlist.) If remote-directory is not specified, the current work- ing directory is used. macdef macro-name Define a macro. Subsequent lines are stored under macro-name; a null line (consecutive newline characters in a file or carriage returns from the terminal) terminates macro input mode. There is a limit of 16 macros and 4096 total characters in all defined macros. Macros remain defined until a close command is exe- cuted. The macro processor interprets $ and \ as special char- acters. A $ followed by a number (or numbers) is replaced by the corresponding argument on the macro invocation command line. A $ followed by an signals that macro processor that the execut- ing macro is to be looped. On the first pass $i is replaced by the first argument on the macro invocation command line, on the second pass it is replaced by the second argument, and so on. A \ followed by any character is replaced by that character. Use \ to prevent special treatment of $. mdelete [ remote-files ] Delete the remote-files on the remote machine. mdir remote-files local-file Like dir, except multiple remote files may be specified. If in- teractive prompting is on, ftp will prompt the user to verify that the last argument is indeed the target local file for re- ceiving mdir output. mget remote-files Expand remote-files on the remote machine and do a for each file name thus produced. See for details on the filename expansion. Resulting file names will then be processed according to case, ntrans, and nmap settings. Files are transferred into the local working directory. mkdir directory-name Make a directory on the remote machine. mls remote-files local-file Like except multiple remote files may be specified, and a local- file must be specified. If is on, ftp asks to confirm the lo- cal-file. mode [ mode-name ] Set the file transfer mode to mode-name. The default mode is modtime file-name Show the last modification time of the file on the remote ma- chine. mput local-files Expand wild cards in the list of local files given as arguments and do a for each file in the resulting list. See for details of filename expansion. Resulting file names will then be processed according to ntrans and nmap settings. nlist [ remote-directory ] [ local-file ] Like giving only file names. nmap [ inpattern outpattern ] Set or unset the filename mapping mechanism. If no arguments are specified, the filename mapping mechanism is unset. If ar- guments are specified, remote filenames are mapped during mput commands and put commands issued without a specified remote tar- get filename. If arguments are specified, local filenames are mapped during mget commands and get commands issued without a specified local target filename. This command is useful when connecting to a non-UNIX remote computer with different file naming conventions or practices. The mapping follows the pat- tern set by inpattern and outpattern. Inpattern is a template for incoming filenames (which may have already been processed according to the ntrans and case settings). Variable templating is accomplished by including the sequences in inpattern. Use to prevent special treatment of $. For example, given inpattern $1.$2 and the remote file name $1 would have the value and $2 would have the value The outpattern determines the resulting mapped filename. The sequences $1, $2, ...., $9 are replaced by any value resulting from the inpattern template. The sequence $0 is replace by the original filename. Additionally, the se- quence '[seq1,seq2P]' is replaced by seq1 if seq1 is not a null string; otherwise it is replaced by seq2. For example, the com- mand would yield the output filename for input filenames and or the input filename and for the input filename Spaces may be in- cluded in outpattern, for example: nmap $1 "|sed 's/ *$//' > $1" . ntrans [ inchars [ outchars ] ] Set or unset the filename character translation mechanism. If no arguments are specified, the filename character translation mechanism is unset. If arguments are specified, characters in remote filenames are translated during mput commands and put commands issued without a specified remote target filename. If arguments are specified, characters in local filenames are translated during mget commands and get commands issued without a specified local target filename. This command is useful when connecting to a non-UNIX remote computer with different file naming conventions or practices. Characters in a filename matching a character in inchars are replaced with the corre- sponding character in outchars. If the character's position in inchars is longer than the length of outchars, the character is deleted from the file name. open host [ port ] Establish a connection to the specified host FTP server. An op- tional port number may be supplied, in which case, ftp will at- tempt to contact an FTP server at that port. If the auto-login option is on (default), ftp will also attempt to automatically log the user in to the FTP server (see below). prompt Toggle file-by-file prompting fo mget, mput, and mdelete (on by default). proxy ftp-command Execute an ftp command on a secondary control connection. This command allows simultaneous connection to two remote ftp servers for transferring files between the two servers. The first proxy command should be an open, to establish the secondary control connection. Enter the command to see other commands executable on the secondary connection. The following commands behave dif- ferently when prefaced by proxy: open will not define new macros during the auto-login process, close will not erase existing macro definitions, get and mget transfer files from the host on the primary control connection to the host on the secondary con- trol connection, and put, mput, and append transfer files from the host on the secondary control connection to the host on the primary control connection. put local-file [ remote-file ] Store a local file on the remote machine. If remote-file is not specified, the local file name is used after processing accord- ing to any ntrans or nmap settings. File transfer uses the cur- rent settings for type, format, mode, and structure. pwd Print the name of the current working directory on the remote machine. quit A synonym for bye. quote arg1 arg2 ... The arguments specified are sent, verbatim, to the remote FTP server. recv remote-file [ local-file ] A synonym for get. remotehelp [ command-name ] Request help from the remote FTP server. If a command-name is specified it is supplied to the server as well. remotestatus [ file-name ] With no arguments, show status of remote machine. If file-name is specified, show status of file-name on the remote machine. rename [ from ] [ to ] Rename the file from on the remote machine, to the file to. reset Clear reply queue. This command re-synchronizes command/reply sequencing with the remote ftp server. Resynchronization may be necessary following a violation of the ftp protocol by the re- mote server. rmdir directory-name Delete a directory on the remote machine. runique Toggle storing of files on the local system with unique file- names. If the target of a get or mget command already exists locally, a is appended to the name. If that name, too, matches another existing file, a is appended and so on until when the transfer is aborted. Note that runique will not affect local files generated from a shell command (see below). The default value is off. send local-file [ remote-file ] A synonym for put. sendport Toggle the use of PORT commands. By default, ftp will attempt to use a PORT command when establishing a connection for each data transfer. The use of PORT commands can prevent delays when performing multiple file transfers. If the PORT command fails, ftp will use the default data port. When the use of PORT com- mands is disabled, no attempt will be made to use PORT commands for each data transfer. This is useful for certain FTP imple- mentations which ignore PORT commands but incorrectly indicate they've been accepted. size file-name Return size of file-name on the remote machine. status Show the current status of ftp. struct [ struct-name ] Set the file transfer structure to struct-name. By default structure is used. sunique Toggle storing of files on remote machine under unique file names. Default value is off. system Show the type of operating system running on the remote machine. tenex Set the file transfer type to that needed to talk to TENEX ma- chines. trace Toggle packet tracing. type [ type-name ] Set the file transfer type to type-name. If no type is speci- fied, the current type is printed. The default type is network ASCII. user user-name [ password ] [ account ] Identify yourself to the remote FTP server. If the password is not specified and the server requires it, ftp will prompt the user for it (after disabling local echo). If an account field is not specified, and the FTP server requires it, the user will be prompted for it. If an account field is specified, an ac- count command will be relayed to the remote server after the lo- gin sequence is completed if the remote server did not require it for logging in. Unless ftp is invoked with disabled, this process is done automatically on initial connection to the FTP server. verbose Toggle verbose mode. In verbose mode, all responses from the FTP server are displayed to the user. In addition, if verbose is on, when a file transfer completes, statistics regarding the efficiency of the transfer are reported. By default, verbose is on. ? [ command ] A synonym for help. Command arguments which have embedded spaces may be quoted with quote " marks. Aborting a file transfer The signal processing in the research version of ftp has been stripped out. Aborts will generally close the connection. File naming conventions Files specified as arguments to ftp commands are processed according to the following rules. 1) If the file name is specified, stdin (for reading) or stdout (for writing) is used. 2) If the first character of the file name is the remainder of the argument is interpreted as a shell command. Ftp reads the stan- dard output of the command, or writes the standard input. If the shell command includes spaces, it must be quoted with double quotes. A useful example of this mechanism is: 3) Failing the above checks, if glob is enabled, local file names are expanded according to the rules used in csh(1); c.f. the glob command. If the ftp command expects a single local file (e.g. put), only the first filename generated by the globbing operation is used. 4) For mget commands and get commands with unspecified local file names, the local filename is the remote filename, subject to al- tering by case, ntrans, or nmap setting. The resulting filename may then be altered if runique is on. 5) For mput commands and put commands with unspecified remote file names, the remote filename is the local filename, subject to al- tering by ntrans or nmap setting. The resulting filename may then be altered by the remote server if sunique is on. File transfer parameters The FTP specification specifies many parameters which may affect a file transfer. The type may be one of (binary), and (for PDP-10's and PDP-20's mostly). Ftp supports the ascii and image types of file transfer, plus local byte size 8 for tenex mode transfers. Ftp supports only the default values for the remaining file transfer parameters: mode, form, and struct. Options Options may be specified at the command line, or to the command inter- preter. -v Verbose. Show all responses from the remote server, as well as report on data transfer statistics. -n Do not attempt upon initial connection. If auto-login is en- abled, ftp will check the (see below) file in the user's home directory for an entry describing an account on the remote ma- chine. If no entry exists, ftp will prompt for the remote ma- chine login name (default is the user identity on the local ma- chine), and, if necessary, prompt for a password and an account with which to login. -i Do not prompt during multiple file transfers. -d Enable debugging. -g Disables file name globbing. The .netrc file The file contains login and initialization information used by the auto-login process. It resides in the user's home directory. The fol- lowing tokens are recognized; they may be separated by spaces, tabs, or new-lines: machine name Identify a remote machine name. The auto-login process searches for a machine token that matches the remote machine specified on the ftp command line or as an open command argument. Once a match is made, subsequent tokens are processed, until end of file is reached or another machine or a default token is encoun- tered. default This is the same as machine name except that default matches any name. There can be only one default token, and it must be after all machine tokens. This is normally used as: default login anonymous password user@site thereby giving the user automatic anonymous ftp login to ma- chines not specified in .netrc. login name Identify a user on the remote machine. If this token is present, the auto-login process will initiate a login using the specified name. password string Supply a password. If this token is present, the auto-login process will supply the specified string if the remote server requires a password as part of the login process. If this token is present in for any user other than and is readable by nonown- ers, ftp will abort auto-login. account string Supply an additional account password. If this token is present, auto-login supplies the string when the remote server demands an additional account password; otherwise auto-login initiates an ACCT command. macdef name Define a macro in the style of macdef. If a macro named init is defined, it is automatically executed as the last step in auto- login. SEE ALSO ftpd(8) BUGS Remote servers may not support all features documented here. Interrupts cause ftp to exit. 4.2 Berkeley Distribution February 23, 1989 FTP(1)