ncftpput(1) General Commands Manual ncftpput(1)
NAME
ncftpput - Internet file transfer program for scripts
SYNOPSIS
ncftpput [options] remote-host remote-directory local-files...
ncftpput [options] bookmark-name remote-directory local-files...
ncftpput -f login.cfg [options] remote-directory local-files...
ncftpput -c remote-host remote-path-name < stdin
ncftpput -C remote-host local-path-name remote-path-name
OPTIONS
Command line flags:
-u XX Use username XX instead of anonymous.
-p XX Use password XX with the username.
-P XX Use port number XX instead of the default FTP service port
(21).
-j XX Use account XX in supplement to the username and password (dep-
recated).
-d XX Use the file XX for debug logging.
-a Use ASCII transfer type instead of binary.
-m Attempt to make the remote destination directory before copy-
ing.
-t XX Timeout after XX seconds.
-U XX Use value XX for the umask.
-v/-V Do (do not) use progress meters. The default is to use
progress meters if the output stream is a TTY.
-f XX Read the file XX for host, user, and password information.
-c Read locally from standard input and write remotely to speci-
fied pathname.
-C Similar to -c, except a local pathname is specified.
-A Append to remote files, instead of overwriting them.
-T XX Upload into temporary files prefixed by XX.
-S XX Upload into temporary files suffixed by XX.
-R Recursive mode; copy whole directory trees.
-r XX Redial a maximum of XX times until connected to the remote FTP
server.
-z/-Z Do (do not) try to resume transfers. The default is to not try
to resume (-Z).
-E Use regular (PORT) data connections.
-F Use passive (PASV) data connections. The default is to use
passive, but to fallback to regular if the passive connection
fails or times out.
-DD Delete local file after successfully uploading it.
-y Try using "SITE UTIME" to preserve timestamps on remote host.
Not many remote FTP servers support this, so it may not work.
-b Run in background (by submitting a batch job and then spawning
ncftpbatch).
-bb Similar to -b option, but only submits the batch job. You will
need to run ncftpbatch for the batch job to be processed. This
is useful if you already have a ncftpbatch process running, or
wish to have better control of when batch jobs are processed.
For example, if you wanted to do background processing of three
files all on the same remote server, it is more polite to use
just one ncftpbatch process to process the three jobs sequen-
tially, rather than having three ncftpbatch processes open
three simultaneous FTP sessions to the same server.
-B XX Try setting the TCP/IP socket buffer size to XX bytes.
-W XX Send raw FTP command XX after logging in.
-X XX Send raw FTP command XX after each file transferred.
-Y XX Send raw FTP command XX before logging out.
The -W, -X, and -Y options are useful for advanced users who
need to tweak behavior on some servers. For example, users ac-
cessing mainframes might need to send some special SITE com-
mands to set blocksize and record format information.
For these options, you can use them multiple times each if you
need to send multiple commands. For the -X option, you can use
the cookie %s to expand into the name of the file that was
transferred.
-o XX Set advanced option XX.
This option is used primarily for debugging. It sets the value
of an internal variable to an integer value. An example usage
would be: -o useFEAT=0,useCLNT=1 which in this case, disables
use of the FEAT command and enables the CLNT command. The
available variables include: usePASV, useSIZE, useMDTM, useR-
EST, useNLST_a, useNLST_d, useFEAT, useMLSD, useMLST, useCLNT,
useHELP_SITE, useSITE_UTIME, STATfileParamWorks, NLSTfileParam-
Works, require20, allowProxyForPORT, doNotGetStartCWD.
DESCRIPTION
The purpose of ncftpput is to do file transfers from the command-line
without entering an interactive shell. This lets you write shell
scripts or other unattended processes that can do FTP. It is also use-
ful for advanced users who want to send files from the shell command
line without entering an interactive FTP program such as ncftp.
By default the program tries to open the remote host and login anony-
mously, but you can specify a username and password information. The
-u option is used to specify the username to login as, and the -p op-
tion is used to specify the password. If you are running the program
from the shell, you may omit the -p option and the program will prompt
you for the password.
Using the -u and -p options are not recommended, because your account
information is exposed to anyone who can see your shell script or your
process information. For example, someone using the ps program could
see your password while the program runs.
You may use the -f option instead to specify a file with the account
information. However, this is still not secure because anyone who has
read access to the information file can see the account information.
Nevertheless, if you choose to use the -f option the file should look
something like this:
host sphygmomanometer.ncftp.com
user gleason
pass mypassword
Don't forget to change the permissions on this file so no one else can
read them.
The -d option is very useful when you are trying to diagnose why a file
transfer is failing. It prints out the entire FTP conversation to the
file you specify, so you can get an idea of what went wrong. If you
specify the special name stdout as the name of the debugging output
file, the output will instead print to the screen.
Using ASCII mode is helpful when the text format of your host differs
from that of the remote host. For example, if you are sending a text
file from a UNIX system to a Windows-based host, you could use the -a
flag which would use ASCII transfer mode so that the file created on
the Windows machine would be in its native text format instead of the
UNIX text format.
You can upload an entire directory tree of files by using the -R flag.
Example:
$ ncftpput -R pikachu.nintendo.co.jp /incoming /tmp/stuff
This would create a /incoming/stuff hierarchy on the remote host.
The -T and -S options are useful when you want to upload file to the
remote host, but you don't want to use the destination pathname until
the file is complete. Using these options, you will not destroy a re-
mote file by the same name until your file is finished. These options
are also useful when a remote process on the remote host polls a spe-
cific filename, and you don't want that process to see that file until
you know the file is finished sending. Here is an example that uploads
to the file /pub/incoming/README, using the filename /pub/incom-
ing/README.tmp as a temporary filename:
$ ncftpput -S .tmp bowser.nintendo.co.jp /pub/incoming /a/README
A neat way to pipe the output from any local command into a remote file
is to use the -c option, which denotes that you're using stdin as in-
put. The following example shows how to make a backup and store it on
a remote machine:
$ tar cf - / | ncftpput -c sonic.sega.co.jp /usr/local/backup.tar
DIAGNOSTICS
ncftpput returns the following exit values:
0 Success.
1 Could not connect to remote host.
2 Could not connect to remote host - timed out.
3 Transfer failed.
4 Transfer failed - timed out.
5 Directory change failed.
6 Directory change failed - timed out.
7 Malformed URL.
8 Usage error.
9 Error in login configuration file.
10 Library initialization failed.
11 Session initialization failed.
AUTHOR
Mike Gleason, NcFTP Software (http://www.ncftp.com).
SEE ALSO
ncftpget(1), ncftp(1), ftp(1), rcp(1), tftp(1).
LibNcFTP (http://www.ncftp.com/libncftp/).
ncftpput NcFTP Software ncftpput(1)