Get List of Files from Ftp Server
I'm Trying to Get a List of All the Files We Have on a Server ( Specifically Every Pdf File We Have There ). I've Tried Using Total Commander and Search for...
I'm trying to get a list of all the files we have on a server ( specifically every pdf file we have there ). I've tried using total commander and search for the files. It worked to some extent, as in, i got a list of every pdf we had there, but no way of exporting the results ( we have 100.000+ files there )
I've tried using a bash script to get the information, but i'm not very experienced with linux, and i don't really know what i'm doing.
My script looks like this :
#!/bin/bash
hostname="<host>"
ftp -i -nv $hostname << EOF
user <username> <password>
ls -R
EOF
Running the above script i get
?Invalid command
501 Illegal PORT command
ftp: bind: Address already in use
221 Goodbye
Any help or pointing me on what to search would be greatly appreciated.
6 Answers
With curl, this is handycurl ftp://yourftpserver/dir/ --user username:password
ncftpls ftp://yourftpserver/dir/*.pdf
Note that patterns such as *.pdf, etc. in the above command do work as expected.
For recursive, use -R. For more options, see man ncftpls.
ncftpls is provided by the ncftp package. For RHEL, this package is available in the epel repo.
curl ftp://user:password@<ip>/path/
The last / is a must if it is a directory. This worked in curl version 7.29.0
Try to configure ftp to use the PASV (passive) mode for data transfers. This done with the -p switch.
I'm not sure if you will be able to do a recursive file listing with this ftp-client. ls -R in my case just gave the list of files and directories in the current working dir. Maybe Recursive FTP directory listing in shell/bash with a single session (using cURL or ftp) will help you.
As mentionend in one of my comments, do not use user:password as plain text in your commands ever, otherwise you are running at risk of beeing history hjacked! Instead use at least a protected/restricted file with the username+password and substitute it in your command, e.g.:
ftp://yourftpserver/dir/ --user "$(cat .userpw)"
Whereas .userpw is your protected/restricted file with the example content: myusername:mypassword
I have always run this FTP script in a linux system, after login ls command is submitted to a ftp connection(passive). List of files is written to a stdout stream. Script is inline in a sh script file.
#!/bin/sh
HOST=11.22.33.44
USER=myuser
PWD="mypwd"
ftp -p -n $HOST <<END_SCRIPT
quote USER $USER
quote PASS $PWD
ls
quit
END_SCRIPT
exit 0
Elena Rostova holds a Master's degree in Public Health Journalism. She covers groundbreaking medical research, holistic wellness trends, mental health awareness, and nutritional science.
