On 8/3/2011 12:21 AM, Keith Roberts wrote:
>
>> There are reasonable clients for automating ftp (curl, wget, ncftp,
>> lftp, etc.). But they can't match rsync for most things if the goal is
>> to move files around, update them in place, etc. And if you have to
>> traverse firewalls, ftp is about the worst possible protocol to use.
>
> I have Proftpd running on my main centos machine. I use gFTP
> on centos to connect to this machine over my LAN. This
> allows me to move files between the laptop and the main
> machine. All my external ports are blocked, and I use ftp as
> I find the GUI easy and intuitive to use. I would not
> consider using a commandline ftp client.
Personally, I find it quicker and easier to use command line scp or
rsync (essentially the same arguments as cp) when moving things around
unless I've forgotten the name and they'll work anywhere ssh works. But
if you want a GUI, the gnome file manager already knows about ssh,
windows shares, and ftp. Try File/Open Location and type in
sftp://user@host:/path and it will connect over ssh as the specified
user and you can drag/drop or copy/paste among windows.
> On my other laptop running Vista I use WinSCP, which is a
> free GUI ftp client, that allows me to move files from
> the centos machine to the Vista laptop.
>
> Having said that, I can also use my USB flash drive to
> transfer some files between those laptops and the
> machine running centos. But it's quicker for me to use ftp
> over the LAN.
Do yourself a favor and set up a common nfs export and samba share from
a stable linux box on the network. Then mount/map that into everything
else. That gives you a common transfer point that works with everything
directly (i.e. you can download from one machine, execute or maybe burn
an iso to a DVD from another without extra transfer steps).
> One example of using ftp would be me doing some
> experimental test programs on my (centos) laptop, then
> ftp'ing to the centos machine and backing up those laptop
> files to my main centos box's HDD. That way, if the HDD on
> the lappy goes down, I still have some decent backups on
> another machine :-)
If you do much of this, set up subversion or a similar version control
system on a stable, backed-up server so it's just a simple 'commit' to
save changes and you'll be able to retrieve any committed version, not
just the last copy. For a generic backup system, look at backuppc which
can use rsync as the transport and pools all duplicate files to keep
more online than you would expect. It's not that there is anything
wrong with ftp, but it is very limited compared to better alternatives.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
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