Move files from a remote ftp server to a local

Peter Nunn

8/6/23, 2:03 AM

I need to pull files from an ftp server regularly and have found that I can get the files easily enough using wget

wget -m --user=yyy --password=xxxx ftps://host.com.au

and that works really nicely. The problem is, it obviously leaves the files behind on the remote server and the next time I run the script, it gets them all again.

I saw that wget has a --delete-after flag, which on first glance would seem to be ideal, but, as the man page says, it only deletes local files not remote ones.

Is there a way to achieve this end? It needs to be via ftp unfortunately as I don't have shell access or rsync access to the remote server. Should I be looking at something other than wget?

0 + 0

file-transfer

wget

ftps

Appleoddity

8/6/23, 4:20 AM

Why are you using wget instead of an ftp client, which would be more likely to have this feature?

Peter Nunn

8/6/23, 8:23 AM

Good question. I can use filzilla or some such to achieve the outcome I'm after, but, I need to be able to script this so that I can run it from cron each day.

Romeo Ninov

8/6/23, 8:45 AM

Have you consider using `lftp`?

Peter Nunn

8/9/23, 7:28 AM

Hi @RomeoNinov can you please change your comment to an answer. I'ts 90% working so I should give you the benefit of status :) All I need to work out is how to have mirror leave the remote directories intact and just remove the files lftp ftp://site.com --user PW --password blah -e "mirror --Remove-source-files --verbose; bye" removes files and directories when its done transferring.

Score:2

Server

Romeo Ninov

8/9/23, 9:25 AM

Instead of wget you can try lftp. Command like:

 lftp site.com --user <username> --password <password> -e "mirror --Remove-source-files -v

in this command -e "mirror is used to do a mirror or remote site

--Remove-source remove the source files after download. Be very careful with this command

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Peter Nunn

8/9/23, 9:52 AM

Thanks for the answer. As I said in the comment above, --Remove-source does remove the source files which is great, but it also removes the directories in the entire directory tree which is not really what I want it to do, just remove the .csv files in the various directories.

Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: Move files from a remote ftp server to a local

TH: ย้ายไฟล์จากเซิร์ฟเวอร์ ftp ระยะไกลไปยังโลคัล

RO: Mutați fișierele de pe un server ftp la distanță pe un server local

RU: Переместить файлы с удаленного ftp-сервера на локальный

VI: Di chuyển tệp từ máy chủ ftp từ xa sang máy chủ cục bộ

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