TNFTP(1) | General Commands Manual | TNFTP(1) |
NAME
tnftp
— Internet
file transfer program
SYNOPSIS
tnftp |
[-46AadefginpRtVv? ] [-N
netrc] [-o
output] [-P
port] [-q
quittime] [-r
retry] [-s
srcaddr] [-T
dir, max[, inc]]
[-x xfersize]
[[user@ ]host
[port]]
[[user@ ]host: [path][/ ]]
[file:/// path]
[ftp:// [user[: password]@ ]host[: port]/ path[/ ][;type= type]]
[http:// [user[: password]@ ]host[: port]/ path]
[https:// [user[: password]@ ]host[: port]/ path]
... |
tnftp |
-u
url file ... |
DESCRIPTION
tnftp
is the user interface to the
Internet standard File Transfer Protocol. The program allows a user to
transfer files to and from a remote network site.
The last five arguments will fetch a file using the FTP or HTTP protocols, or by direct copying, into the current directory. This is ideal for scripts. Refer to AUTO-FETCHING FILES below for more information.
Options may be specified at the command line, or to the command interpreter.
-4
- Forces
tnftp
to only use IPv4 addresses. -6
- Forces
tnftp
to only use IPv6 addresses. -A
- Force active mode FTP. By default,
tnftp
will try to use passive mode FTP and fall back to active mode if passive is not supported by the server. This option causestnftp
to always use an active connection. It is only useful for connecting to very old servers that do not implement passive mode properly. -a
- Causes
tnftp
to bypass normal login procedure, and use an anonymous login instead. -d
- Enables debugging.
-e
- Disables command line editing. This is useful for Emacs ange-ftp mode.
-f
- Forces a cache reload for transfers that go through the FTP or HTTP proxies.
-g
- Disables file name globbing.
-i
- Turns off interactive prompting during multiple file transfers.
-N
netrc- Use netrc instead of ~/.netrc. Refer to THE .netrc FILE for more information.
-n
- Restrains
tnftp
from attempting “auto-login” upon initial connection for non auto-fetch transfers. If auto-login is enabled,tnftp
will check the .netrc (see below) file in the user's home directory for an entry describing an account on the remote machine. If no entry exists,tnftp
will prompt for the remote machine login name (default is the user identity on the local machine), and, if necessary, prompt for a password and an account with which to login. To override the auto-login for auto-fetch transfers, specify the username (and optionally, password) as appropriate. -o
output- When auto-fetching files, save the contents in
output. output is parsed
according to the FILE NAMING
CONVENTIONS below. If output is not
‘
-
’ or doesn't start with ‘|
’, then only the first file specified will be retrieved into output; all other files will be retrieved into the basename of their remote name. -P
port- Sets the port number to port.
-p
- Enable passive mode operation for use behind connection filtering
firewalls. This option has been deprecated as
tnftp
now tries to use passive mode by default, falling back to active mode if the server does not support passive connections. -q
quittime- Quit if the connection has stalled for quittime seconds.
-R
- Restart all non-proxied auto-fetches.
-r
wait- Retry the connection attempt if it failed, pausing for wait seconds.
-s
srcaddr- Uses srcaddr as the local IP address for all connections.
-t
- Enables packet tracing.
-T
direction,
maximum[,
increment]- Set the maximum transfer rate for direction to
maximum bytes/second, and if specified, the
increment to increment bytes/second. Refer to
rate
for more information. -u
url file ...- Upload files on the command line to url where
url is one of the
‘
ftp://
’ URL types as supported by auto-fetch (with an optional target filename for single file uploads), and file is one or more local files to be uploaded. -V
- Disable
verbose
andprogress
, overriding the default of enabled when output is to a terminal. -v
- Enable
verbose
andprogress
. This is the default if output is to a terminal (and in the case ofprogress
,tnftp
is the foreground process). Forcestnftp
to show all responses from the remote server, as well as report on data transfer statistics. -x
xfersize- Set the size of the socket send and receive buffers to
xfersize. Refer to
xferbuf
for more information. -?
- Display help to stdout, and exit.
The client host with which tnftp
is to
communicate may be specified on the command line. If this is done,
tnftp
will immediately attempt to establish a
connection to an FTP server on that host; otherwise,
tnftp
will enter its command interpreter and await
instructions from the user. When tnftp
is awaiting
commands from the user the prompt
‘ftp>
’ is provided to the user. The
following commands are recognized by tnftp
:
!
[command [args]]- Invoke an interactive shell on the local machine. If there are arguments, the first is taken to be a command to execute directly, with the rest of the arguments as its arguments.
$
macro-name [args]- Execute the macro macro-name that was defined with
the
macdef
command. Arguments are passed to the macro unglobbed. account
[passwd]- Supply a supplemental password required by a remote system for access to resources once a login has been successfully completed. If no argument is included, the user will be prompted for an account password in a non-echoing input mode.
append
local-file [remote-file]- Append a local file to a file on the remote machine. If
remote-file is left unspecified, the local file name
is used in naming the remote file after being altered by any
ntrans
ornmap
setting. File transfer uses the current settings fortype
,format
,mode
, andstructure
. ascii
- Set the file transfer
type
to network ASCII. This is the default type. bell
- Arrange that a bell be sounded after each file transfer command is completed.
binary
- Set the file transfer
type
to support binary image transfer. bye
- Terminate the FTP session with the remote server and exit
tnftp
. An end of file will also terminate the session and exit. case
- Toggle remote computer file name case mapping during
get
,mget
andmput
commands. Whencase
is on (default is off), remote computer file names with all letters in upper case are written in the local directory with the letters mapped to lower case. cd
remote-directory- Change the working directory on the remote machine to remote-directory.
cdup
- Change the remote machine working directory to the parent of the current remote machine working directory.
chmod
mode remote-file- Change the permission modes of the file remote-file on the remote system to mode.
close
- Terminate the FTP session with the remote server, and return to the command interpreter. Any defined macros are erased.
cr
- Toggle carriage return stripping during ascii type file retrieval. Records
are denoted by a carriage return/linefeed sequence during ascii type file
transfer. When
cr
is on (the default), carriage returns are stripped from this sequence to conform with the UNIX single linefeed record delimiter. Records on non-UNIX remote systems may contain single linefeeds; when an ascii type transfer is made, these linefeeds may be distinguished from a record delimiter only whencr
is off. debug
[debug-value]- Toggle debugging mode. If an optional debug-value is
specified it is used to set the debugging level. When debugging is on,
tnftp
prints each command sent to the remote machine, preceded by the string ‘-->
’. delete
remote-file- Delete the file remote-file on the remote machine.
dir
[remote-path [local-file]]- Print a listing of the contents of a directory on the remote machine. The
listing includes any system-dependent information that the server chooses
to include; for example, most UNIX systems will
produce output from the command ‘
ls -l
’. If remote-path is left unspecified, the current working directory is used. If interactive prompting is on,tnftp
will prompt the user to verify that the last argument is indeed the target local file for receivingdir
output. If no local file is specified, or if local-file is ‘-
’, the output is sent to the terminal. disconnect
- A synonym for
close
. edit
- Toggle command line editing, and context sensitive command and file completion. This is automatically enabled if input is from a terminal, and disabled otherwise.
epsv
,epsv4
,epsv6
- Toggle the use of the extended
EPSV
andEPRT
commands on all IP, IPv4, and IPv6 connections respectively. First tryEPSV
/EPRT
, and thenPASV
/PORT
. This is enabled by default. If an extended command fails then this option will be temporarily disabled for the duration of the current connection, or untilepsv
,epsv4
, orepsv6
is executed again. exit
- A synonym for
bye
. features
- Display what features the remote server supports (using the
FEAT
command). fget
localfile- Retrieve the files listed in localfile, which has one line per filename.
form
format- Set the file transfer
form
to format. The default (and only supported) format is ‘non-print
’. ftp
host [port]- A synonym for
open
. gate
[host [port]]- Toggle gate-ftp mode, which used to connect through the TIS FWTK and
Gauntlet FTP proxies. This will not be permitted if the gate-ftp server
hasn't been set (either explicitly by the user, or from the
FTPSERVER
environment variable). If host is given, then gate-ftp mode will be enabled, and the gate-ftp server will be set to host. If port is also given, that will be used as the port to connect to on the gate-ftp server. get
remote-file [local-file]- Retrieve the remote-file and store it on the local
machine. If the local file name is not specified, it is given the same
name it has on the remote machine, subject to alteration by the current
case
,ntrans
, andnmap
settings. The current settings fortype
,form
,mode
, andstructure
are used while transferring the file. glob
- Toggle filename expansion for
mdelete
,mget
,mput
, andmreget
. If globbing is turned off withglob
, the file name arguments are taken literally and not expanded. Globbing formput
is done as in csh(1). Formdelete
,mget
, andmreget
, each remote file name is expanded separately on the remote machine and the lists are not merged. Expansion of a directory name is likely to be different from expansion of the name of an ordinary file: the exact result depends on the foreign operating system and FTP server, and can be previewed by doing ‘mls remote-files -
’. Note:mget
,mput
andmreget
are not meant to transfer entire directory subtrees of files. That can be done by transferring a tar(1) archive of the subtree (in binary mode). hash
[size]- Toggle hash-sign (‘
#
’) printing for each data block transferred. The size of a data block defaults to 1024 bytes. This can be changed by specifying size in bytes. Enablinghash
disablesprogress
. help
[command]- Print an informative message about the meaning of
command. If no argument is given,
tnftp
prints a list of the known commands. idle
[seconds]- Set the inactivity timer on the remote server to seconds seconds. If seconds is omitted, the current inactivity timer is printed.
image
- A synonym for
binary
. lcd
[directory]- Change the working directory on the local machine. If no directory is specified, the user's home directory is used.
less
file- A synonym for
page
. lpage
local-file- Display local-file with the program specified by the
set pager
option. lpwd
- Print the working directory on the local machine.
ls
[remote-path [local-file]]- A synonym for
dir
. macdef
macro-name- Define a macro. Subsequent lines are stored as the macro
macro-name; a null line (consecutive newline
characters in a file or carriage returns from the terminal) terminates
macro input mode. There is a limit of 16 macros and 4096 total characters
in all defined macros. Macro names can be a maximum of 8 characters.
Macros are only applicable to the current session they are defined within
(or if defined outside a session, to the session invoked with the next
open
command), and remain defined until aclose
command is executed. To invoke a macro, use the$
command (see above).The macro processor interprets ‘
$
’ and ‘\
’ as special characters. A ‘$
’ followed by a number (or numbers) is replaced by the corresponding argument on the macro invocation command line. A ‘$
’ followed by an ‘i
’ signals the macro processor that the executing macro is to be looped. On the first pass ‘$i
’ is replaced by the first argument on the macro invocation command line, on the second pass it is replaced by the second argument, and so on. A ‘\
’ followed by any character is replaced by that character. Use the ‘\
’ to prevent special treatment of the ‘$
’. mdelete
[remote-files]- Delete the remote-files on the remote machine.
mdir
remote-files local-file- Like
dir
, except multiple remote files may be specified. If interactive prompting is on,tnftp
will prompt the user to verify that the last argument is indeed the target local file for receivingmdir
output. mget
remote-files- Expand the remote-files on the remote machine and do
a
get
for each file name thus produced. Seeglob
for details on the filename expansion. Resulting file names will then be processed according tocase
,ntrans
, andnmap
settings. Files are transferred into the local working directory, which can be changed withlcd
directory; new local directories can be created with! mkdir
directory. mkdir
directory-name- Make a directory on the remote machine.
mls
remote-files local-file- Like
ls
, except multiple remote files may be specified, and the local-file must be specified. If interactive prompting is on,tnftp
will prompt the user to verify that the last argument is indeed the target local file for receivingmls
output. mlsd
[remote-path]- Display the contents of remote-path (which should
default to the current directory if not given) in a machine-parsable form,
using
MLSD
. The format of display can be changed with ‘remopts mlst
...’. mlst
[remote-path]- Display the details about remote-path (which should
default to the current directory if not given) in a machine-parsable form,
using
MLST
. The format of display can be changed with ‘remopts mlst
...’. mode
mode-name- Set the file transfer
mode
to mode-name. The default (and only supported) mode is ‘stream
’. modtime
remote-file- Show the last modification time of the file on the remote machine, in
RFC 2822
format. more
file- A synonym for
page
. mput
local-files- Expand wild cards in the list of local files given as arguments and do a
put
for each file in the resulting list. Seeglob
for details of filename expansion. Resulting file names will then be processed according tontrans
andnmap
settings. mreget
remote-files- As per
mget
, but performs areget
instead ofget
. msend
local-files- A synonym for
mput
. newer
remote-file [local-file]- Get the file only if the modification time of the remote file is more
recent that the file on the current system. If the file does not exist on
the current system, the remote file is considered
newer
. Otherwise, this command is identical toget
. nlist
[remote-path [local-file]]- A synonym for
ls
. nmap
[inpattern outpattern]- Set or unset the filename mapping mechanism. If no arguments are
specified, the filename mapping mechanism is unset. If arguments are
specified, remote filenames are mapped during
mput
commands andput
commands issued without a specified remote target filename. If arguments are specified, local filenames are mapped duringmget
commands andget
commands issued without a specified local target filename. This command is useful when connecting to a non-UNIX remote computer with different file naming conventions or practices. The mapping follows the pattern set by inpattern and outpattern.inpattern is a template for incoming filenames (which may have already been processed according to the
ntrans
andcase
settings). Variable templating is accomplished by including the sequences ‘$1
’, ‘$2
’, ..., ‘$9
’ in inpattern. Use ‘\
’ to prevent this special treatment of the ‘$
’ character. All other characters are treated literally, and are used to determine thenmap
[inpattern] variable values. For example, given inpattern ‘$1.$2
’ and the remote file name ‘mydata.data
’, ‘$1
’ would have the value ‘mydata
’, and ‘$2
’ would have the value ‘data
’.The outpattern determines the resulting mapped filename. The sequences ‘
$1
’, ‘$2
’, ..., ‘$9
’ are replaced by any value resulting from the inpattern template. The sequence ‘$0
’ is replaced by the original filename. Additionally, the sequence[
seq1,
seq2]
is replaced by seq1 if seq1 is not a null string; otherwise it is replaced by seq2. For example, the commandnmap $1.$2.$3 [$1,$2].[$2,file]
would yield the output filename ‘
myfile.data
’ for input filenames ‘myfile.data
’ and ‘myfile.data.old
’, ‘myfile.file
’ for the input filename ‘myfile
’, and ‘myfile.myfile
’ for the input filename ‘.myfile
’. Spaces may be included in outpattern, as in the example:nmap $1 sed s/ *$// > $1
Use the ‘
\
’ character to prevent special treatment of the ‘$
’, ‘[
’, ‘]
’, and ‘,
’ characters. ntrans
[inchars [outchars]]- Set or unset the filename character translation mechanism. If no arguments
are specified, the filename character translation mechanism is unset. If
arguments are specified, characters in remote filenames are translated
during
mput
commands andput
commands issued without a specified remote target filename. If arguments are specified, characters in local filenames are translated duringmget
commands andget
commands issued without a specified local target filename. This command is useful when connecting to a non-UNIX remote computer with different file naming conventions or practices. Characters in a filename matching a character in inchars are replaced with the corresponding character in outchars. If the character's position in inchars is longer than the length of outchars, the character is deleted from the file name. open
host [port]- Establish a connection to the specified host FTP
server. An optional port number may be supplied, in which case,
tnftp
will attempt to contact an FTP server at that port. If theset auto-login
option is on (default),tnftp
will also attempt to automatically log the user in to the FTP server (see below). page
file- Retrieve
file
and display with the program specified by theset pager
option. passive
[auto
]- Toggle passive mode (if no arguments are given). If
auto
is given, act as ifFTPMODE
is set to ‘auto’. If passive mode is turned on (default),tnftp
will send aPASV
command for all data connections instead of aPORT
command. ThePASV
command requests that the remote server open a port for the data connection and return the address of that port. The remote server listens on that port and the client connects to it. When using the more traditionalPORT
command, the client listens on a port and sends that address to the remote server, who connects back to it. Passive mode is useful when usingtnftp
through a gateway router or host that controls the directionality of traffic. (Note that though FTP servers are required to support thePASV
command byRFC 1123
, some do not.) pdir
[remote-path]- Perform
dir
[remote-path], and display the result with the program specified by theset pager
option. pls
[remote-path]- Perform
ls
[remote-path], and display the result with the program specified by theset pager
option. pmlsd
[remote-path]- Perform
mlsd
[remote-path], and display the result with the program specified by theset pager
option. preserve
- Toggle preservation of modification times on retrieved files.
progress
- Toggle display of transfer progress bar. The progress bar will be disabled
for a transfer that has local-file as
‘
-
’ or a command that starts with ‘|
’. Refer to FILE NAMING CONVENTIONS for more information. Enablingprogress
disableshash
. prompt
- Toggle interactive prompting. Interactive prompting occurs during multiple
file transfers to allow the user to selectively retrieve or store files.
If prompting is turned off (default is on), any
mget
ormput
will transfer all files, and anymdelete
will delete all files.When prompting is on, the following commands are available at a prompt:
a
- Answer ‘yes’ to the current file, and automatically answer ‘yes’ to any remaining files for the current command.
n
- Answer ‘no’, and do not transfer the file.
p
- Answer ‘yes’ to the current file, and turn off prompt
mode (as if
prompt off
had been given). q
- Terminate the current operation.
y
- Answer ‘yes’, and transfer the file.
?
- Display a help message.
Any other response will answer ‘yes’ to the current file.
proxy
ftp-command- Execute an FTP command on a secondary control connection. This command
allows simultaneous connection to two remote FTP servers for transferring
files between the two servers. The first
proxy
command should be anopen
, to establish the secondary control connection. Enter the command ‘proxy ?
’ to see other FTP commands executable on the secondary connection. The following commands behave differently when prefaced byproxy
:open
will not define new macros during the auto-login process,close
will not erase existing macro definitions,get
andmget
transfer files from the host on the primary control connection to the host on the secondary control connection, andput
,mput
, andappend
transfer files from the host on the secondary control connection to the host on the primary control connection. Third party file transfers depend upon support of the FTP protocolPASV
command by the server on the secondary control connection. put
local-file [remote-file]- Store a local file on the remote machine. If
remote-file is left unspecified, the local file name
is used after processing according to any
ntrans
ornmap
settings in naming the remote file. File transfer uses the current settings fortype
,format
,mode
, andstructure
. pwd
- Print the name of the current working directory on the remote machine.
quit
- A synonym for
bye
. quote
[arg ...]- The arguments specified are sent, verbatim, to the remote FTP server.
rate
direction [maximum [increment]]- Throttle the maximum transfer rate to maximum
bytes/second. If maximum is 0, disable the throttle.
direction may be one of:
maximum can be modified on the fly by increment bytes (default: 1024) each time a given signal is received:
If maximum is not supplied, the current throttle rates are displayed.
Note:
rate
is not yet implemented for ascii mode transfers. rcvbuf
size- Set the size of the socket receive buffer to size.
recv
remote-file [local-file]- A synonym for
get
. reget
remote-file [local-file]reget
acts likeget
, except that if local-file exists and is smaller than remote-file, local-file is presumed to be a partially transferred copy of remote-file and the transfer is continued from the apparent point of failure. This command is useful when transferring very large files over networks that are prone to dropping connections.remopts
command [command-options]- Set options on the remote FTP server for command to
command-options (whose absence is handled on a
command-specific basis). Remote FTP commands known to support options
include:
MLST
(used forMLSD
andMLST
). rename
[from [to]]- Rename the file from on the remote machine, to the file to.
reset
- Clear reply queue. This command re-synchronizes command/reply sequencing with the remote FTP server. Resynchronization may be necessary following a violation of the FTP protocol by the remote server.
restart
marker- Restart the immediately following
get
orput
at the indicated marker. On UNIX systems, marker is usually a byte offset into the file. rhelp
[command-name]- Request help from the remote FTP server. If a command-name is specified it is supplied to the server as well.
rmdir
directory-name- Delete a directory on the remote machine.
rstatus
[remote-file]- With no arguments, show status of remote machine. If remote-file is specified, show status of remote-file on remote machine.
runique
- Toggle storing of files on the local system with unique filenames. If a
file already exists with a name equal to the target local filename for a
get
ormget
command, a ‘.1
’ is appended to the name. If the resulting name matches another existing file, a ‘.2
’ is appended to the original name. If this process continues up to ‘.99
’, an error message is printed, and the transfer does not take place. The generated unique filename will be reported. Note thatrunique
will not affect local files generated from a shell command (see below). The default value is off. send
local-file [remote-file]- A synonym for
put
. sendport
- Toggle the use of
PORT
commands. By default,tnftp
will attempt to use aPORT
command when establishing a connection for each data transfer. The use ofPORT
commands can prevent delays when performing multiple file transfers. If thePORT
command fails,tnftp
will use the default data port. When the use ofPORT
commands is disabled, no attempt will be made to usePORT
commands for each data transfer. This is useful for certain FTP implementations which do ignorePORT
commands but, incorrectly, indicate they've been accepted. set
[option value]- Set option to value. If
option and value are not
given, display all of the options and their values. The currently
supported options are:
anonpass
- Defaults to
$FTPANONPASS
ftp_proxy
- Defaults to
$ftp_proxy
. http_proxy
- Defaults to
$http_proxy
. https_proxy
- Defaults to
$https_proxy
. no_proxy
- Defaults to
$no_proxy
. pager
- Defaults to
$PAGER
. prompt
- Defaults to
$FTPPROMPT
. rprompt
- Defaults to
$FTPRPROMPT
. sslnoverify
- Defaults to
$FTPSSLNOVERIFY
.
site
[arg ...]- The arguments specified are sent, verbatim, to the remote FTP server as a
SITE
command. size
remote-file- Return size of remote-file on remote machine.
sndbuf
size- Set the size of the socket send buffer to size.
status
- Show the current status of
tnftp
. struct
struct-name- Set the file transfer structure to
struct-name. The default (and only supported)
structure is ‘
file
’. sunique
- Toggle storing of files on remote machine under unique file names. The
remote FTP server must support FTP protocol
STOU
command for successful completion. The remote server will report unique name. Default value is off. system
- Show the type of operating system running on the remote machine.
tenex
- Set the file transfer type to that needed to talk to TENEX machines.
throttle
- A synonym for
rate
. trace
- Toggle packet tracing.
type
[type-name]- Set the file transfer
type
to type-name. If no type is specified, the current type is printed. The default type is network ASCII. umask
[newmask]- Set the default umask on the remote server to newmask. If newmask is omitted, the current umask is printed.
unset
option- Unset option. Refer to
set
for more information. usage
command- Print the usage message for command.
user
user-name [password [account]]- Identify yourself to the remote FTP server. If the
password is not specified and the server requires
it,
tnftp
will prompt the user for it (after disabling local echo). If an account field is not specified, and the FTP server requires it, the user will be prompted for it. If an account field is specified, an account command will be relayed to the remote server after the login sequence is completed if the remote server did not require it for logging in. Unlesstnftp
is invoked with “auto-login” disabled, this process is done automatically on initial connection to the FTP server. verbose
- Toggle verbose mode. In verbose mode, all responses from the FTP server are displayed to the user. In addition, if verbose is on, when a file transfer completes, statistics regarding the efficiency of the transfer are reported. By default, verbose is on.
xferbuf
size- Set the size of the socket send and receive buffers to size.
?
[command]- A synonym for
help
.
Command arguments which have embedded spaces may be quoted with
quote ‘"
’ marks.
Commands which toggle settings can take an explicit
on
or off
argument to force
the setting appropriately.
Commands which take a byte count as an argument (e.g.,
hash
, rate
, and
xferbuf
) support an optional suffix on the argument
which changes the interpretation of the argument. Supported suffixes
are:
If tnftp
receives a
SIGINFO
(see the status
argument of stty(1)) or
SIGQUIT
signal whilst a transfer is in progress, the
current transfer rate statistics will be written to the standard error
output, in the same format as the standard completion message.
AUTO-FETCHING FILES
In addition to standard commands, this version of
tnftp
supports an auto-fetch feature. To enable
auto-fetch, simply pass the list of hostnames/files on the command line.
The following formats are valid syntax for an auto-fetch element:
- [user
@
]host:
[path][/
] - “Classic” FTP format.
If path contains a glob character and globbing is enabled, (see
glob
), then the equivalent ofmget
path is performed.If the directory component of path contains no globbing characters, it is stored locally with the name basename (see basename(1)) of
path
, in the current directory. Otherwise, the full remote name is used as the local name, relative to the local root directory. ftp://
[user[:
password]@
]host[:
port]/
path[/
][;type=
type]- An FTP URL, retrieved using the FTP protocol if
set ftp_proxy
isn't defined. Otherwise, transfer the URL using HTTP via the proxy defined inset ftp_proxy
. Ifset ftp_proxy
isn't defined and user is given, login as user. In this case, use password if supplied, otherwise prompt the user for one.If a suffix of ‘
;type=A
’ or ‘;type=I
’ is supplied, then the transfer type will take place as ascii or binary (respectively). The default transfer type is binary.In order to be compliant with
RFC 3986
,tnftp
interprets the path part of an ‘ftp://
’ auto-fetch URL as follows:- The ‘
/
’ immediately after the host[:
port] is interpreted as a separator before the path, and not as part of the path itself. - The path is interpreted as a
‘
/
’-separated list of name components. For all but the last such component,tnftp
performs the equivalent of acd
command. For the last path component,tnftp
performs the equivalent of aget
command. - Empty name components, which result from
‘
//
’ within the path, or from an extra ‘/
’ at the beginning of the path, will cause the equivalent of acd
command without a directory name. This is unlikely to be useful. - Any ‘
%
XX’ codes (perRFC 3986
) within the path components are decoded, with XX representing a character code in hexadecimal. This decoding takes place after the path has been split into components, but before each component is used in the equivalent of acd
orget
command. Some often-used codes are ‘%2F
’ (which represents ‘/
’) and ‘%7E
’ (which represents ‘~
’).
The above interpretation has the following consequences:
- The path is interpreted relative to the default login directory of the
specified user or of the ‘anonymous’ user. If the
/ directory is required, use a leading path of
‘
%2F
’. If a user's home directory is required (and the remote server supports the syntax), use a leading path of ‘%7Euser
’. For example, to retrieve /etc/motd from ‘/
localhost
’ as the user ‘myname
’ with the password ‘mypass
’, use ‘ftp://myname:mypass@localhost/%2fetc/motd
’ - The exact
cd
andget
commands can be controlled by careful choice of where to use ‘/
’ and where to use ‘%2F
’ (or ‘%2f
’). For example, the following URLs correspond to the equivalents of the indicated commands: - You must have appropriate access permission for each of the
intermediate directories that is used in the equivalent of a
cd
command.
- The ‘
http://
[user[:
password]@
]host[:
port]/
path- An HTTP URL, retrieved using the HTTP protocol. If
set http_proxy
is defined, it is used as a URL to an HTTP proxy server. If HTTP authorization is required to retrieve path, and user (and optionally password) is in the URL, use them for the first attempt to authenticate. https://
[user[:
password]@
]host[:
port]/
path- An HTTPS URL, retrieved using the HTTPS protocol. If
set https_proxy
is defined, it is used as a URL to an HTTPS proxy server. If HTTPS authorization is required to retrieve path, and user (and optionally password) is in the URL, use them for the first attempt to authenticate. There is currently no certificate validation and verification. file:///
path- A local URL, copied from /path on the local host.
about:
topic- Display information regarding topic; no file is
retrieved for this auto-fetched element. Supported values include:
about:ftp
- Information about
tnftp
. about:version
- The version of
tnftp
. Useful to provide when reporting problems.
Unless noted otherwise above, and -o
output is not given, the file is stored in the current
directory as the basename(1) of
path. Note that if a HTTP redirect is received, the
fetch is retried using the new target URL supplied by the server, with a
corresponding new path. Using an explicit
-o
output is recommended, to
avoid writing to unexpected file names.
If a classic format or an FTP URL format has a trailing
‘/
’ or an empty
path component, then tnftp
will connect to the site and cd
to the directory
given as the path, and leave the user in interactive mode ready for further
input. This will not work if set ftp_proxy
is being
used.
Direct HTTP transfers use HTTP 1.1. Proxied FTP and HTTP transfers use HTTP 1.0.
If -R
is given, all auto-fetches that
don't go via the FTP or HTTP proxies will be restarted. For FTP, this is
implemented by using reget
instead of
get
. For HTTP, this is implemented by using the
‘Range: bytes=’ HTTP/1.1 directive.
If WWW or proxy WWW authentication is required, you will be prompted to enter a username and password to authenticate with.
When specifying IPv6 numeric addresses in a URL, you need to
surround the address in square brackets. E.g.:
‘ftp://[::1]:21/
’. This is because
colons are used in IPv6 numeric address as well as being the separator for
the port number.
ABORTING A FILE TRANSFER
To abort a file transfer, use the terminal interrupt key (usually
Ctrl-C). Sending transfers will be immediately halted. Receiving transfers
will be halted by sending an FTP protocol ABOR
command to the remote server, and discarding any further data received. The
speed at which this is accomplished depends upon the remote server's support
for ABOR
processing. If the remote server does not
support the ABOR
command, the prompt will not appear
until the remote server has completed sending the requested file.
If the terminal interrupt key sequence is used whilst
tnftp
is awaiting a reply from the remote server for
the ABOR
processing, then the connection will be
closed. This is different from the traditional behaviour (which ignores the
terminal interrupt during this phase), but is considered more useful.
FILE NAMING CONVENTIONS
Files specified as arguments to tnftp
commands are processed according to the following rules.
- If the file name ‘
-
’ is specified, the stdin (for reading) or stdout (for writing) is used. - If the first character of the file name is
‘
|
’, the remainder of the argument is interpreted as a shell command.tnftp
then forks a shell, using popen(3) with the argument supplied, and reads (writes) from the stdout (stdin). If the shell command includes spaces, the argument must be quoted; e.g. ‘"| ls -lt"
’. A particularly useful example of this mechanism is: ‘dir "" |more
’. - Failing the above checks, if globbing is enabled, local file names are
expanded according to the rules used in the
csh(1); see the
glob
command. If thetnftp
command expects a single local file (e.g.put
), only the first filename generated by the globbing operation is used. - For
mget
commands andget
commands with unspecified local file names, the local filename is the remote filename, which may be altered by acase
,ntrans
, ornmap
setting. The resulting filename may then be altered ifrunique
is on. - For
mput
commands andput
commands with unspecified remote file names, the remote filename is the local filename, which may be altered by antrans
ornmap
setting. The resulting filename may then be altered by the remote server ifsunique
is on.
FILE TRANSFER PARAMETERS
The FTP specification specifies many parameters which may affect a
file transfer. The type
may be one of
“ascii”, “image” (binary),
“ebcdic”, and “local byte size” (for PDP-10's
and PDP-20's mostly). tnftp
supports the ascii and
image types of file transfer, plus local byte size 8 for
tenex
mode transfers.
tnftp
supports only the default values for
the remaining file transfer parameters: mode
,
form
, and struct
.
THE .netrc FILE
The .netrc file contains login and
initialization information used by the auto-login process. It resides in the
user's home directory, unless overridden with the -N
netrc option, or specified in the
NETRC
environment variable. The following tokens are
recognized; they may be separated by spaces, tabs, or new-lines:
machine
name- Identify a remote machine name. The auto-login
process searches the .netrc file for a
machine
token that matches the remote machine specified on thetnftp
command line or as anopen
command argument. Once a match is made, the subsequent .netrc tokens are processed, stopping when the end of file is reached or anothermachine
or adefault
token is encountered. default
- This is the same as
machine
name except thatdefault
matches any name. There can be only onedefault
token, and it must be after allmachine
tokens. This is normally used as:default login anonymous password user@site
thereby giving the user an automatic anonymous FTP login to machines not specified in .netrc. This can be overridden by using the
-n
flag to disable auto-login. login
name- Identify a user on the remote machine. If this token is present, the auto-login process will initiate a login using the specified name.
password
string- Supply a password. If this token is present, the auto-login process will
supply the specified string if the remote server requires a password as
part of the login process. Note that if this token is present in the
.netrc file for any user other than
anonymous,
tnftp
will abort the auto-login process if the .netrc is readable by anyone besides the user. account
string- Supply an additional account password. If this token is present, the
auto-login process will supply the specified string if the remote server
requires an additional account password, or the auto-login process will
initiate an
ACCT
command if it does not. macdef
name- Define a macro. This token functions like the
tnftp
macdef
command functions. A macro is defined with the specified name; its contents begin with the next .netrc line and continue until a blank line (consecutive new-line characters) is encountered. Like the other tokens in the .netrc file, amacdef
is applicable only to themachine
definition preceding it. Amacdef
entry cannot be used by multiplemachine
definitions; rather, it must be defined following eachmachine
it is intended to be used with. If a macro namedinit
is defined, it is automatically executed as the last step in the auto-login process. For example,default macdef init epsv4 off
followed by a blank line.
COMMAND LINE EDITING
tnftp
supports interactive command line
editing, via the editline(3)
library. It is enabled with the edit
command, and is
enabled by default if input is from a tty. Previous lines can be recalled
and edited with the arrow keys, and other GNU Emacs-style editing keys may
be used as well.
The editline(3) library is configured with a .editrc file — refer to editrc(5) for more information.
An extra key binding is available to tnftp
to provide context sensitive command and filename completion (including
remote file completion). To use this, bind a key to the
editline(3) command
ftp-complete
. By default, this is bound to the TAB
key.
COMMAND LINE PROMPT
By default, tnftp
displays a command line
prompt of ‘ftp>
’ to the
user. This can be changed with the set prompt
command.
A prompt can be displayed on the right side of the screen (after
the command input) with the set rprompt
command.
The following formatting sequences are replaced by the given information:
%/
- The current remote working directory.
%c
[[0
]n],%.
[[0
]n]- The trailing component of the current remote working directory, or
n trailing components if a digit
n is given. If n begins with
‘
0
’, the number of skipped components precede the trailing component(s) in the format “/
<
number>
trailing” (for ‘%c
’) or “...
trailing” (for ‘%.
’). %M
- The remote host name.
%m
- The remote host name, up to the first dot
‘
.
’. %n
- The remote user name.
%%
- A single percent character ‘
%
’.
ENVIRONMENT
tnftp
uses the following environment
variables.
FTPANONPASS
- Password to send in an anonymous FTP transfer. Defaults to
“
`whoami`@
”. FTPMODE
- Overrides the default operation mode. Support values are:
FTPPROMPT
- Command-line prompt to use. Defaults to
‘
ftp>
’. Refer to COMMAND LINE PROMPT for more information. FTPRPROMPT
- Command-line right side prompt to use. Defaults to empty string. Refer to COMMAND LINE PROMPT for more information.
FTPSERVER
- Host to use as gate-ftp server when
gate
is enabled. FTPSERVERPORT
- Port to use when connecting to gate-ftp server when
gate
is enabled. Default is port returned by a getservbyname(3) lookup of “ftpgate/tcp
”. FTPUSERAGENT
- The value to send for the HTTP User-Agent header.
FTPSSLNOVERIFY
- Set to 1 to not verify SSL certificates.
HOME
- For default location of a .netrc file, if one exists.
NETRC
- An alternate location of the .netrc file.
PAGER
- Used by various commands to display files. Defaults to more(1) if empty or not set.
SHELL
- For default shell.
ftp_proxy
- URL of FTP proxy to use when making FTP URL requests (if not defined, use
the standard FTP protocol).
See
http_proxy
for further notes about proxy use. http_proxy
- URL of HTTP proxy to use when making HTTP URL requests. If proxy
authentication is required and there is a username and password in this
URL, they will automatically be used in the first attempt to authenticate
to the proxy.
If “unsafe” URL characters are required in the username or password (for example ‘
@
’ or ‘/
’), encode them withRFC 3986
‘%XX
’ encoding.Note that the use of a username and password in
ftp_proxy
andhttp_proxy
may be incompatible with other programs that use it (such as lynx(1)).NOTE: this is not used for interactive sessions, only for command-line fetches.
https_proxy
- URL of HTTPS proxy to use when making HTTPS URL requests.
See
http_proxy
for further notes about proxy use. no_proxy
- A space or comma separated list of hosts (or domains) for which proxying
is not to be used. Each entry may have an optional trailing
‘
:port
’, which restricts the matching to connections to that port.
EXTENDED PASSIVE MODE AND FIREWALLS
Some firewall configurations do not allow
tnftp
to use extended passive mode. If you find that
even a simple ls
appears to hang after printing a
message such as this:
229 Entering Extended Passive Mode
(|||58551|)
then you will need to disable extended passive mode with
epsv4 off
. See the above section
The .netrc File for an example of
how to make this automatic.
SEE ALSO
STANDARDS
tnftp
attempts to be compliant with:
RFC 959
- File Transfer Protocol
RFC 1123
- Requirements for Internet Hosts - Application and Support
RFC 1635
- How to Use Anonymous FTP
RFC 2389
- Feature negotiation mechanism for the File Transfer Protocol
RFC 2428
- FTP Extensions for IPv6 and NATs
RFC 2616
- Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1
RFC 2822
- Internet Message Format
RFC 3659
- Extensions to FTP
RFC 3986
- Uniform Resource Identifier (URI)
HISTORY
The tnftp
command appeared in
4.2BSD.
Various features such as command line editing, context sensitive
command and file completion, dynamic progress bar, automatic fetching of
files and URLs, modification time preservation, transfer rate throttling,
configurable command line prompt, and other enhancements over the standard
BSD tnftp
were implemented
in NetBSD 1.3 and later releases by
Luke Mewburn ⟨lukem@NetBSD.org⟩.
IPv6 support was added by the WIDE/KAME project (but may not be present in all non-NetBSD versions of this program, depending if the operating system supports IPv6 in a similar manner to KAME).
BUGS
Correct execution of many commands depends upon proper behavior by the remote server.
An error in the treatment of carriage returns in the 4.2BSD ascii-mode transfer code has been corrected. This correction may result in incorrect transfers of binary files to and from 4.2BSD servers using the ascii type. Avoid this problem by using the binary image type.
tnftp
assumes that all IPv4 mapped
addresses (IPv6 addresses with a form like
::ffff:10.1.1.1
) indicate IPv4 destinations which
can be handled by AF_INET
sockets. However, in
certain IPv6 network configurations, this assumption is not true. In such an
environment, IPv4 mapped addresses must be passed to
AF_INET6
sockets directly. For example, if your site
uses a SIIT translator for IPv6-to-IPv4 translation,
tnftp
is unable to support your configuration.
February 25, 2023 | Linux 6.10.2-arch1-1 |