which FTP client do you use?

[brodie]

what FTP clients do you people use? i use fetch mostly but like the interface of rbrowser, but have failed to find a resume download function in it. so let me know what you use, and why....

[AHunter3]

NetFinder, under both 9 and X. I switched from Fetch a few years back, although I still keep it around 'cuz it's a good dog :)

NetFinder is one of Peter Li & Vincent Tan's items, and should probably be added to your poll choices.

[Phil St. Romain]

I've added NetFinder to the poll and your vote as well, AHunter3.

I used NetFinder in OS 9 and for quite awhile in OS X until I found RBrowser Lite, which works for me. NetFinder is good, but its "intelligent" sensing of file types when uploading doesn't work for sensing ascii file types so you have to go into the preferences each time and change them to upload cgi files. This setting is much handier in RBrowser, and I like the column view as well.

For the web sites I manage, I generally use Golive, which isn't an ftp program, of course, which which has an excellent ftp component.

Good poll, brodie!

[Mikey-San]

Interarchy.

Interarchy. Interarchy. Interarchy.

A long time ago, I was converted to Anarchie Pro from (ugh) Fetch. When I left 9 for X, Interarchy was one of the first programs to hit my drive.

Absolutely excellent software.


-/-
Mikey-San

[wayneyoung]

I use ncftp. It is a text application for use in the terminal, so may not appeal to everyone. It is fast, full-featured, and free.

[nkuvu]

Originally posted by wayneyoung
I use ncftp. It is a text application for use in the terminal, so may not appeal to everyone. It is fast, full-featured, and free.
Me too. It even remembers the last directory I was in on the remote site...

[lerkfish]

I've always liked transmit, besides it has a cool icon!

:)

[Andrew LaGow]

I have a little program called CaptainFTP. It's fast and stable and the best part about it is it's free. I upgraded my old copy of Anarchie 3.8 to whatever it is they're calling it these days but it gave me nothing but trouble.

Andy

[AKcrab]

What's with all the command-line freaks? I thought I was strange for using VI (http://www.wam.umd.edu/~petersd/vi.html) , but that's not nearly as nutty as all the stuff you have to type to ftp. ;)
:p

Me, I'll stick with rBrowser.

[AHunter3]

Actually I have to confess that FTP is one of the few things I can actually do decently well from the command line. The first computer I ever FTP'd from was an IBM 3090 mainframe at the university, and I'd ftp to info-mac shareware archives at sumex-aim.stanford.edu from the command line and "get" the files then FTP them again to the client (an IBM clone)'s floppy drive to take them home and unBinHex and unStuff them.

[nkuvu]

A typical ftp session (comments in green):

ncftp some_site (where some_site is a place I've been before, so ncftp has it bookmarked)

get -C * Force continuation for any file that i have partially downloaded, get everything in the directory (I have high speed internet at work, so store things in a certain directory in an ftp account I have. Go home and download them)

rm * If I have everything I want from the directory, that is

quit Uh, quit. :)

See? Simple. Then again, I have Unix habits -- I prefer the CLI over the GUI most of the time...

[mervTormel]

Originally posted by AKcrab
What's with all the command-line freaks?
GUI ftp clients are fine for browsing, but in the real work-a-day world, commando ftp is most useful for shoving data around a la scheduled jobs, worrying little about it unless it fails and pages you.

one practical script for those of us that have broadband and the public IP changes while you're out and about, a cron job to ftp the current ip up to your ISP ftp site every n minutes:

curl -s 'http://checkip.dyndns.org/' | dhtml | \
egrep "address|hostname" | tee ~/curip

ftp ftp.domain.com <<__end_ftp # assumes your ~/.netrc exists
put ~/curip curip
quit
__end_ftp

now, you can look up your rig's current ip and remote in.

let's see your GUI ftp wake up and drink from that toilet.

[edit: corrected ftp scriptage so it would actually work -mT ;]

[nkuvu]

Originally posted by mervTormel
let's see your GUI ftp wake up and drink from that toilet.
Um. Ick.

:p :D

[Phil St. Romain]

Merv, I'll admit that command-line gives you some flexibility that most gui programs don't have, but couldn't some of those preferences be written into an ftp program.

I'm also not sure why command line ftp should somehow define who works "in the real work-a-day world." As one who manages several large web sites, I don't need to be uploading pages every so many minutes, but only when I upgrade them. And a gui program works just fine for that.

[mervTormel]

couldn't some of those preferences be written into an ftp program.
i don't know what you mean by that.
I'm also not sure why command line ftp should somehow define who works "in the real work-a-day world.
i guess i was trying to point out a larger concern than a single-seat, single-engine operation.

hypothetically:

consider an effort, like at apple, where a lot of files from hundreds of people get cooked every day and need to be pushed over to some QA sandbox, via some authenticated process, for testing. now, Ed Schnook is absent one day, so his GUI ftp push task has failed? and the entire QA department is sitting on their thumbs until Ed returns?

no, the human element has been eliminated from the process, there is a job that collects and pushes the files at some designated time so QA has a fresh batch of hot files to feast on in the morning. and it's auditable, so Ed's off the hook.

sometimes a GUI is convenient for occasional tasks, but the command line versions of these programs were designed quite a while ago to solve large-scale real-world problems.

if i had to collect and GUI ftp 100,000 files more than zero times, you'd read about the aftermath in the news :D

news at 11 (http://home.mindspring.com/~bduart/retroTVwTestPattern.jpg)

[Craig R. Arko]

Well, I voted RBrowser since the full version has a very nice interface to ssh and scp, but ncftp is pretty darn nice too.

While not strictly ftp, the is a new app called Vapor (http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=15172&db=mac) which give a GUI frontend to tunneling a wide variety of services through ssh, including AFP. This may make RBrowser obsolete for several of my uses, 'cause now I won't have to worry about wacking resource forks when I grab stuff remotely from our server.

[Phil St. Romain]

i guess i was trying to point out a larger concern than a single-seat, single-engine operation.

Sure, Merv. I understand. But people who drive single-seat, single-engine operations are also in the "real, work-a-day world." They just don't need an ftp program to do all that you describe.

I'm still not sure why some of the automated kinds of activities you mention couldn't be provided for a gui program. For example:
A. Task One.
- folders and files to upload.
- destination/remote server.
- upload times.
B. Task Two, etc.

I know a lot of this can already be done with Applescript and maybe even macro programs. But why not build it into the ftp program itself? What say, developers who are reading this?

Phil

[mumkin]

sftp -- it's reassuring. and i like saying "bye" to my ftp server when I'm done with it :)

[xchanyazy]

I like Transmit (real easy to use, very nice interface, ability to enter in commands through a mini-cli), but am somewhat concerned with how "weak" the encryption is if you store the passwords for your favorites.

The file is (originally) set as rw-r--r--, and it takes about 30 seconds to break the code, so to speak.

This did save my butt, though. The day after I changed my password for my University account, I completely forgot it. Oops.

Anyways, you shouldn't be storing your password anywhere except your head. Stupid lazy people.

I really need to get more sleep.

[chug]

ncftp is a nifty command line ftp client. Work very well. I belive you can install it viva fink..

:)

[Blacknova]

Captain FTP... it's "cheep" (like the budgie)... and I couldn't be bothered to find anything else. It does the job, so why worry? :D

Greets,
Nova

[phidauex]

I use transmit, because its simple and sweet.

However, command line definately has its place. If i'm darting around in the command line anyway, gleefully reliving my youthful unix haxxoring days, and i need to slap some files around, i'll just drop in using the ftp command. But in normal day to day file grabbing, i like a clean simple user interface. Thats why i chose macOS in the first place. If i want complex and POWERFUL, i go with linux, if i want simple and powerful, I like my pretty aqua :)

peace,
phidauex

[Dragos]

Interarchy mostly, although for some things I must use command line.

[saint.duo]

rbrowser lite when I'm feeling lazy, and just want to drag-n-drop some files to update my web site. (though, I could write an applescript droplet to do the same, I already said that when i use rbrowser, i'm feeling LAZY). :)

usually, I use the plain ole vanilla terminal for FTP.

[RacerX]

I use RBrowser for OPENSTEP, Rhapsody and Mac OS X systems, and Fetch (still using 3.0.3) for the Classic Mac OS.

[vickishome]

I have used Fetch since the beginning of time because it did what I needed. But now I think I'm ready to do more.

Is there an ftp client that will list out my files, permissions and all, similar to using ls -l? After all these years of not knowing what the heck I was doing with permissions, I would now like to get a full listing of all of my website files with permissions info so I can see what I have on my website. Which ftp client would be best for this?

[js62]

I used to use Fetch but now I use SFTP. A bit of a learning curve but the added flexibilty of the cli is the way to go for me.

Joe

[mervTormel]

Originally posted by vickishome
Is there an ftp client that will list out my files, permissions and all, similar to using ls -l?
hmm, i don't know if any of the gui clients list file suchly, but commando ftp does:

$ ftp ftp.mindspring.com
Trying 199.174.114.30...
Connected to www.mindspring.com.
220 FTP server ready
331 Password required for xxxx.
230-
230- Your disk quota is: 10.00 megabytes
230- Your disk usage is: 3.32 megabytes (33.17% of quota)
230-
230 User xxxx logged in.
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp> pwd
257 "/www" is current directory.
ftp> cd ..
250 CWD command successful.
ftp> ls
500 EPSV not understood.
227 Entering Passive Mode (199,174,114,30,42,188).
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for file list
drwxr-xr-x 3 root system 4096 Mar 26 01:30 etc
drwxr-xr-x 2 10000 100 4096 Mar 25 15:36 ftp
drwxrwxr-x 2 10000 ftp 4096 Aug 2 06:52 www
226 Transfer complete.

note that, in this case, the ~/.netrc file has the user and secret word for this "machine". see man ftp

[elmimmo]

I do not know how many people noticed it, or found it worthy, but Mac OS 9 came with a ftp client. In the Spanish version it was called "Navegador de Red" so I guess its English brother was "Net browser".

It was the utility one used to connect to tcp/ip local networks, but it accepted IP input and ftp protocol.

[vickishome]

This is fantastic!! :D
[G4] [4:13pm] [vicki] [/private/etc] Exit, and we all die: % ftp ftp.vickishome.com
Connected to ftp.vickishome.com.
220 FTP Service
Name (ftp.vickishome.com:vicki): vickis
331 Password required for vickis.
Password:
230 User vickis logged in.
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp> ls
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for file list.
drwx--xr-x 36 vickis client 12288 Aug 1 13:21 .
drwx--xr-x 36 vickis client 12288 Aug 1 13:21 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 vickis client 163 Apr 4 16:04 .htaccess
drwxr-xr-x 2 vickis client 8192 Aug 1 16:00 00icons
# many other lines deleted
Now to go back to do ls -FR and print it off. This should prove to be fun! :D

Currently printing off 28 pages of file listings!! Thank goodness for built-in duplex printing. :)

[saint.duo]

rbrowser lite (and I assume rbrowser) will do this, as well.

here's a screenshot of a non-important directory on one of my sites.

... err. maybe not. I must have FTP disabled on my web server. that is bad. Guess I'll fix it later.

Here's a shot of my local web server, connected via Rbrowser. And no, the G5.jpg file you see is NOT some inside information. It's the famous ebay'ed apple prototype board that I think basically ended up in the Aug 13 towers.
http://freefallsoft.dyndns.org/~kenneyc/perms.jpg

Originally posted by vickishome

Is there an ftp client that will list out my files, permissions and all, similar to using ls -l? After all these years of not knowing what the heck I was doing with permissions, I would now like to get a full listing of all of my website files with permissions info so I can see what I have on my website. Which ftp client would be best for this?

[vickishome]

I just grabbed rbrowserlite and gave it a try. Nice! It's designed to look and behave just like an OS X window. I like it! I will still need an ftp client, and this one has very strong possiblities. Thanks! :)

[9KILLER]

RBrowser is nice, but a little clunky and slow. Interarchy 5.0.1 is fast and sleek, but has "issues."

Thankfully, from what I can tell of the beta so far, Interarchy 6 is great. Totally fast and sleek, as well as giving you 2 file views (column and list). It also supports long filenames, now.

(I'm a "Command-J" type of guy. I must have an FTP client that supports launching BBEdit with "Command-J." I don't like BBEdit's "open from FTP server" and I don't want to manually download every file I work on.)

[illovich]

I like Fugu. It's still under development, but it's nice to have a gui for sftp, which I prefer for obvious reasons.

[rickthechemist]

Command -line; it's simple and powerful all in one..

Cheers,

RtC

[Andrew LaGow]

Will ncftp download and/or delete entire directories recursively? That is the one huge advantage of programs like Interarchy over command-line ftp programs. If I could find a command line ftp program that did that I'd ditch all my GUI ftp programs in a NY minute.

[vonleigh]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned lftp. It's really a wonderful ftp program with a very interesting feature (from the man page):

"Every operation in lftp is reliable, that is any not fatal error is ignored and the operation is repeated. So if downloading breaks, it will be restarted from the point automatically. Even if ftp server does not support REST command, lftp will try to retrieve the file from the very beginning until the file is transferred completely."

Quite nifty really. Additionally to that it connects to pretty much everything (I found it while looking for an app that would do implicit-ssl).

"lftp can handle six file access methods - ftp, ftps, http, https, hftp, fish and file"

It's a very elegant app and it has yet more interesting features (queuing, background, etc.)


v


Edit: use fink to install it.

[mervTormel]

Originally posted by baryonyx
Will ncftp download and/or delete entire directories recursively? That is the one huge advantage of programs like Interarchy over command-line ftp programs. If I could find a command line ftp program that did that I'd ditch all my GUI ftp programs in a NY minute.
lftp has a 'mirror' command. check it out, andy.

[Andrew LaGow]

Merv, it looks very nice--just what I'm looking for. Thank you.

lftp also seems to have a method for launching shell commands. Now I might be able to manually run some CGI scripts on my previously unreachable (via shell) web server.

Andy