How to recursively download a folder via FTP on Linux

Question

I m trying to ftp a folder using the command line ftp client  but so far I ve only been able to use  get  to get individual files

User · Answer

Use WGet instead   It supports HTTP and FTP protocols   wget -r ftp   mydomain com mystuff   Good Luck   reference  http   linux about com od commands l blcmdl1 wget htm

User · Answer

There is  ncftp  which is available for installation in linux  This works on the FTP protocol and can be used to download files and folders recursively  works on linux  Has been used and is working fine for recursive folder file transfer   Check this link    http   www ncftp com

User · Answer

wget -r ftp   url  Work perfectly for Redhat and Ubuntu

User · Answer

You could rely on wget which usually handles ftp get properly  at least in my own experience   For example  wget -r ftp   user pass server com   You can also use -m which is suitable for mirroring  It is currently equivalent to -r -N -l inf  If you ve some special characters in the credential details  you can specify the --user and --password arguments to get it to work  Example with custom login with specific characters  wget -r --user  quot user login quot  --password  quot Pa  wo  D quot  ftp   server com   As pointed out by  asmaier  watch out that even if -r is for recursion  it has a default max level of 5   -r --recursive     Turn on recursive retrieving   -l depth --level depth     Specify recursion maximum depth level depth   The default maximum depth is 5    If you don t want to miss out subdirs  better use the mirroring option  -m   -m --mirror     Turn on options suitable for mirroring   This option turns on recursion and time-stamping  sets infinite     recursion depth and keeps FTP directory listings   It is currently equivalent to -r -N -l inf     --no-remove-listing

User · Answer

You should not use ftp  Like telnet it is not using secure protocols  and passwords are transmitted in clear text  This makes it very easy for third parties to capture your username and password   To copy remote directories remotely  these options are better    rsync is the best-suited tool if you can login via ssh  because it copies only the differences  and can easily restart in the middle in case the connection breaks  ssh -r is the second-best option to recursively copy directory structures    See    rsync man page ssh man page

User · Answer

ncftp -u  lt user gt  -p  lt pass gt   lt server gt  ncftp gt  mget directory

User · Answer

Just to complement the answer given by Thibaut Barr  re  I used wget -r -nH --cut-dirs 5 -nc ftp   user pass server  absolute path to directory  Note the double slash after the server name  If you don t put an extra slash the path is relative to the home directory of user   -nH avoids the creation of a directory named after the server name -nc avoids creating a new file if it already exists on the destination  it is just skipped  --cut-dirs 5  allows to take the content of  absolute path to directory and to put it in the directory where you launch wget  The number 5 is used to filter out the 5 components of the path  The double slash means an extra component

User · Answer

If you want to stick to command line FTP  you should try NcFTP  Then you can use get -R to recursively get a folder  You will also get completion

User · Answer

If lftp is installed on your machine  use mirror dir  And you are done  See the comment by Ciro below if you want to recursively download a directory

User · Answer

If you can use scp instead of ftp  the -r option will do this for you  I would check to see whether you can use a more modern file transfer mechanism than FTP

User · Answer

toggle the prompt by PROMPT command   Usage   ftp gt cd  to directory     ftp gt prompt     ftp gt mget

User · Answer

If you can  I strongly suggest you tar and bzip  or gzip  whatever floats your boat  the directory on the remote machine   for a directory of any significant size  the bandwidth savings will probably be worth the time to zip unzip

[linux] How to recursively download a folder via FTP on Linux

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