Recursively PUT files to a remote server using FTP

Question

I'm currently in a situation where I have very limited access to a server, but need to upload and download a significant amount of files contained within a single directory structure. I don't have SSH access, so I can't use SCP - and rsync isn't an option either unfortunately.

I'm currently using ncftpput, which is great but seems to be quite slow (in spite of a fast connection).

Is there an alternative / better method I could look into?

(Please accept my apologies if this has been covered, I did a quick search prior to posting but didn't find anything that specifically answered my question)

Answer 1

I'm not familiar with ncftpput. For non-interactive FTP, I've always used the Perl Net::FTP module -- http://perldoc.perl.org/Net/FTP.html

This will be faster because you can login, then do all the transfers at once (it seems from a cursory glance that you execute ncftpput once for each file get/put).

Just remember to NEVER use ASCII mangling! This is the default, so use:

$ftp->binary

ASCII mangling needs to die in the same fire with MySQL automatic-timezone-interpreting.

Answer 2

Try using LFTP: http://lftp.yar.ru/

or YAFC: http://yafc.sourceforge.net/index.php

Answer 3

If you have a good connection, I would recommend mounting the ftp server via the GNOME or KDE file managers, or else using CurlFtpFS. Then you can treat it like just another folder.