Box provides cloud storage service and offers support for FTP/SFTP. The following software are tested on FTP.
https://filezilla-project.org/index.php
As there are many dependencies to work around, it is very unwieldy to install for non-Admin users.
A plain FTP as invoked from the Linux ftp command is not allowed at the clusters, so we turned to lftp which also supports recursive directories. This script downloads from remote directory at the FTP site to a local one,
#!/bin/bash
export HOST="ftp.box.com"
export USER="USER"
export PASS="PASS"
export FTPURL="ftp://$USER:$PASS@$HOST"
export LCD="Local directory"
export RCD="Remove directory"
lftp $HOST <<END
set ftp:list-options -a;
open '$FTPURL'
lcd $LCD;
cd $RCD;
mirror --parallel=15 --log=$HOME/box.log --verbose
bye
END
A verbose log file is request. One can use additional options such as --exclude-glob a-dir-to-exclude --exclude-glob a-file-to-exclude --exclude-glob a-file-group-to-exclude* --exclude-glob other-files-to-exclude.
Syntax: rsync -options –otherOptions sourceDir targetDir
where Dir could be username@remote_host:destination_directory.
GUI: https://sourceforge.net/projects/grsync/
| Options | Descriptions |
|---|---|
| -v | Turn on verbose mode |
| -a | This turns on archive mode to recurse the directory copying all the files and directories and perserving things like case, permissions, and ownership on the target (Note: Ownership may not be preserved if you are not logged in as the root user) |
| -z | Turns on compression during the transfer. This option compresses the data as it is copied over the network |
| -r | –recursive: recurse into directories |
| -h | human-readable: output numbers in a human-readable format |
| -u | –update: skip files that are newer on the receiver |
| -n | –dry-run: show what would have been transferred |
| -e | option with protocol name you want to use, e.g., -avzhe ssh |
| –bwlimit | e.g., bandwidth=100 |
| –existing | only update files that already exist on receiver |
| –exclude | To exclude certain files and directories from the copy process similar to .gitignore |
| –include | opposite of –exclude |
| -P | Combination of –progress which gives you a progress bar for the transfers and –partial allows you to resume interrupted transfers |
| -ssh | –rsh=”ssh -l username” to copy over network |
However, rsync was not designed for FTP.