command line ftp client

[Tony Baechler]

Hi,

I'm afraid I have to jump in here.  This is now the second reply 
concerning the "standard" ftp client.  I have to take issue with this 
usage.  As far as I can tell, there is no standard ftp client.  Let me 
explain.  I'm aware that on Windows and various BSD distributions, 
saying "ftp" at a command prompt will run a fairly basic ftp client.  
However, at least in Debian, this is not standard and isn't installed 
with the standard software.  Instead, you have to install netkit-ftp.  
Also, every "standard" implementation is different.  I recently read 
that NetBSD maintains their own ftp client and their own version of 
ftpd, different from the old BSD ftp but still simply called as ftp.  
Windows ftp doesn't work exactly the same as BSD ftp.  Even netkit-ftp, 
while based on BSD ftp, isn't exactly the same as it was ported to 
Linux.  Therefore, I would ask that people please don't refer to a 
"standard" ftp client as each OS is slightly different.  I don't know 
how Fedora and other Linux distros do things, but I would guess that 
their version of ftp has small differences also.

Regarding the comment that ncftp doesn't have a secure version from Hart 
Larry, I would say that the ftp protocol isn't designed for security 
anyway as user names and passwords are sent in cleartext.  If you really 
need security, try stunnel.  If you're thinking that sftp is secure ftp, 
that's wrong.  It's part of ssh and works like ftp but it isn't the same 
protocol.  If you mean ftp over SSL, again look at stunnel.  I would 
agree that ncftp itself doesn't support ftps or whatever it's called.

Finally, the differences between the BSD ftp and other clients.  I 
personally use ncftp and here are just a few differences:  First, ncftp 
stores login information so I don't have to enter it every time.  
Second, it has bookmarks so I can just say "o speakup" instead of "open 
ftp.linux-speakup.org."  It has nice progress bars so I'm not wondering 
if it's still working when downloading big files.  It automatically 
enters binary mode.  It supports passive ftp, not all clients do.  It 
has ncftpget, ncftpput and ncftpls which do as the names imply 
completely from the command line.  It seems faster than other clients, 
but that could be me.  It preserves dates and times, lftp doesn't by 
default.  It doesn't require the "prompt" command before "mget" for 
multiple files.  It gets multiple files with the "get" command and 
doesn't ask for each file.  It converts line endings on the fly.  It 
lets you get a file named file1 remotely and rename it to file2 
locally.  It supports resuming broken files.  I'm sure there are lots of 
other things but that's all I can think of offhand.

Alex Snow wrote:
> The standard "ftp" client works well, also lftp and ncftp are good 
> choices.
>