Simple shell script to ftp put a file

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Level 4

1,047 points

Simple shell script to ftp put a file

I have the following script:

#!/bin/bash
filename="/home/paul/myfile.tar.gz"
hostname="ftp.myhost.com"
username="username"
password="password"
ftp -un $hostname <<EOF
quote USER $username
quote PASS $password
binary
put $filename
quit
EOF

But when run, with all the variables filled in, I get this:

ftp: Invalid URL `n'

What am I doing wrong?

Posted on Mar 12, 2011 9:13 PM

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Answer 1

Jeffrey Ellis Author

Level 4

1,047 points

Mar 12, 2011 9:31 PM in response to Jeffrey Ellis

Ok, a little further:

#!/bin/sh
HOST='ftp.server.com'
USER='user'
PASSWD='password'
REMOTE='"remote file"'
FILE='"local file"'
ftp -n $HOST <<END_SCRIPT
quote USER $USER
quote PASS $PASSWD
put $FILE $REMOTE
quit
END_SCRIPT
exit 0

This works great. The only thing that's missing is the directory. Where does that go?

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Answer 2

Jeffrey Ellis Author

Level 4

1,047 points

Mar 12, 2011 9:59 PM in response to Jeffrey Ellis

Got that one as well 🙂

#!/bin/sh
HOST='ftp.server.com'
USER='user'
PASSWD='password'
REMOTE='"remote file"'
FILE='"local file"'
DIR='/usr/home/User/public_html/'
 
ftp -n $HOST <<END_SCRIPT
quote USER $USER
quote PASS $PASSWD
cd $DIR
put $FILE $REMOTE
quit
END_SCRIPT
exit 0

In this example, I tried to upload from a mounted volume:

FILE='"Volumes/Backup HD/Applications/ReadMe.txt"'

Normally, ftp would accept this. But when run from the script, it balks:

Can't open `Volumes/Backup HD/Applications/ReadMe.txt': No such file or directory

So I guess the question again is, what am I doing wrong?

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Answer 3

Mar 13, 2011 4:41 AM in response to Jeffrey Ellis

Not sure what the problem is, but curl might be easier:
<pre style="border: 1px solid #bbb; padding-left: .75ex; padding-top: .25em; padding-bottom: .25em; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em; margin-left: 1ex; max-width: 100ex; overflow: auto; font-size: 10px; font-family: Monaco, 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; color: #333; background: #e6e6e6; line-height: normal">url -u user:password -T local/path/to/file ftp://example.com/remote/path/to/file</pre>

Message was edited by: Cole Tierney

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Answer 4

Jeffrey Ellis Author

Level 4

1,047 points

Mar 13, 2011 5:41 AM in response to Cole Tierney

Ah, can't use CURL. This for a script I'm writing for public consumption.

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Answer 5

Mar 13, 2011 6:16 AM in response to Jeffrey Ellis

Ah, can't use CURL. This for a script I'm writing for public consumption.

Um, eh? Why not? What do you mean by "public consumption" here? A desire to avoid adding dependencies and availability? You do realize that cURL is part of part of Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server? Some other consideration here?

(Given a choice, getting rid of ftp would make support easier. sftp, for instance, can make a chunk of this problem go away once the keys are established, including the embedded credentials. There are other options; I'm using stuff that does a remote afp mount, for instance. rsync direct, or via ssh. ftp is nasty, gnarly, insecure, fussy and largely incompatible with firewalls. But other than that, ftp is just slow.)

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