Topics Map > Software > Remote Access > FTP
Using SFTP
FTP, or File Transfer Protocol, has been moving files from computer to computer since the earliest days of the Internet. To cope with today's more dangerous Internet FTP has added encryption, becoming Secure FTP or SFTP. But the commands remain the same.
There are a wide variety of SFTP clients that will take care of all the actual commands for you, giving you a drag-and-drop interface similar to Windows. For Windows we suggest SecureFX. But SFTP is not difficult to use. In fact, if you're comfortable with Linux you'll find that you only need to learn a few extra commands.
To run SFTP from one of the SSCC Linux servers, type
> sftp server
Where server should be replace by the name of the server you wish to connect to.
The SSCC maintains two FTP servers: ftp.ssc.wisc.edu connects to the Linux file system; ntftp.ssc.wisc.edu connects to the Windows network. In both cases once you log in your remote directory will start out as your home directory.
Linux | ftp.ssc.wisc.edu |
---|---|
Windows | ntftp.ssc.wisc.edu |
Note that Linstat does not accept FTP connections. Use ftp.ssc.wisc.edu instead.
SFTP Commands
The following basic commands are probably all you'll need to use SFTP.
cd directory
Changes the remote directory to the the directory you enter. Note that Windows servers will generally allow you to use the Linux style slash in path names (directory/subdirectory), but Linux servers will not allow you to use the Windows style backslash ( directory\subdirectory).
lcd directory
Changes the local directory to the directory you enter.
ls
Lists the tables of the remote directory
get filename
Copies a file from the remote directory to the local directory. Along with put, this is FTP's raison d'etre. Note that if you already have a file with the same name it will be overwritten without warning, so be careful!
put filename
Copies a file from the local directory to the remote directory. The same warning applies.
mget filename
Works like get, except that you can use wildcards (*, etc.) to specify multiple files.
mput filename
Works like put, except that you can use wildcards (*, etc.) to specify multiple files.
help
Lists all the commands available in FTP, but doesn't explain them. Thus it's mostly useful as a reminder.
quit
Quits FTP (exit or logout won't work).