This article is classified "Real"
Alex's Beginners guide to using FTP
Sometimes you want to make a copy of a file which is on a machine far away
on the internet. It may be on another continent or across the room. The
owner of that machine may be perfectly happy to let you have the copy but
doesn't want to give just anybody access to his machine. The File Transfer
Process lets system administrators devote a section of their hard disks for
files which can be copied to other computers (it sometimes allows new files
to be uploaded too). You don't get to fully use the machine as you would in
a telnet session or rlogin. Instead you are limited to a set of commands
with which you can copy files to your local machine but do no damage on the
remote machine.
You must open a connection to the remote machine.
ftp <ip.address>
<ip.address> can be the numeric form eg 132.24.99.2 or a valid machine name
such as vela.acs.oakland.edu
ftp vela.acs.oakland.edu
You will then be asked for your id and password. If the machine is private
then you need to be told this by the system administrator. If the remote
machine intends to let anyone use it then it will probably have a user id
called "anonymous" (hence the phrase "Anonymous FTP"). In place of the
password the remote machine will ask for your email address. It will record
this and might complain if it is different from your local machine's name.
anonymous
me@mymachine.mysite.ac.uk
If this works then you will be presented with a welcome message telling you
not to do anything naughty and you will be placed in an appropriate
directory. This is usually /pub, meaning the directory containing the public
files.
To list the files in that directory use
ls
(Directories usually have a line starting with a d)
To change directory you use cd.
cd /pub
cd galactic-guide
cd theguide
Now see if the file you want is there.
ls
You should see files including something like tg145.zip, or complete.zip.
Whenever I use ftp, I switch on hash marking with
hash
One more thing must be done. We have to say that this is a binary file and
not an ascii text file. If you forget this then you may fetch a useless
file!
bin
Now to actually get the file.
get tg145.zip
You need to wait a while (A few seconds for fast university connection, or a
few minutes to hours for a slow modem connection). Then you will see a
message saying how quickly it transfered the file. Then
quit
The file should be in your local directory that you started off in.