1ncftp(1) General Commands Manual ncftp(1)
2
6 ncftp - Browser program for the File Transfer Protocol
7
9 ncftp [host]
10 ncftp [ftp://host.name/directory/]
12
14 The purpose of ncftp is to provide a powerful and flexible interface to
15 the Internet standard File Transfer Protocol. It is intended to
16 replace the stock ftp program that comes with the system.
17 Although the program appears to be rather spartan, you'll find that
19 ncftp has a wealth of valuable performance and usage features. The
20 program was designed with an emphasis on usability, and it does as much
21 as it can for you automatically so you can do what you expect to do
22 with a file transfer program, which is transfer files between two
23 interconnected systems.
24 Some of the cooler features include progress meters, filename comple‐
26 tion, command-line editing, background processing, auto-resume down‐
27 loads, bookmarking, cached directory listings, host redialing, working
28 with firewalls and proxies, downloading entire directory trees, etc.,
29 etc.
30 The ncftp distribution comes with the useful utility programs
32 ncftpget(1) and ncftpput(1) which were designed to do command-line FTP.
33 In particular, they are very handy for shell scripts. This version of
34 ncftp no longer does command-line FTP, since the main ncftp program is
35 more of a browser-type program.
36 OPTIONS
38 The program allows you to specify a host or directory URL on the com‐
39 mand line. This is a synonym for running ncftp and then using the open
40 command. A few command-line flags are allowed with this mode:
41 -u XX Use username XX instead of anonymous.
43 -p XX Use password XX with the username.
45 -j XX Use account XX in supplement to the username and password (dep‐
47 recated).
48 -P XX Use port number XX instead of the default FTP service port
50 (21).
51 INTRODUCTION TO THE COMMAND SHELL
53 Upon running the program you are presented a command prompt where you
54 type commands to the program's shell. Usually you will want to open a
55 remote filesystem to transfer files to and from your local machine's
56 filesystem. To do that, you need to know the symbolic name of the
57 remote system, or its Internet Protocol (IP) address. For example, a
58 symbolic name might be ``typhoon.unl.edu,'' and its IP address could be
59 ``129.93.33.24.'' To open a connection to that system, you use the
60 program's open command:
61 open typhoon.unl.edu
63 open 129.93.33.24
64 Both of these try to open the machine called typhoon at the University
66 of Nebraska. Using the symbolic name is the preferred way, because IP
67 addresses may change without notice, while the symbolic names usually
68 stay the same.
69 When you open a remote filesystem, you need to have permission. The
71 FTP Protocol's authentication system is very similar to that of logging
72 in to your account. You have to give an account name, and its password
73 for access to that account's files. However, most remote systems that
74 have anything you might be interested in don't require an account name
75 for use. You can often get anonymous access to a remote filesystem and
76 exchange files that have been made publicly accessible. The program
77 attempts to get anonymous permission to a remote system by default.
78 What actually happens is that the program tries to use ``anonymous'' as
79 the account name, and when prompted for a password, uses your E-mail
80 address as a courtesy to the remote system's maintainer. You can have
81 the program try to use a specific account also. That will be explained
82 later.
83 After the open command completes successfully, you are connected to the
85 remote system and logged in. You should now see the command prompt
86 change to reflect the name of the current remote directory. To see
87 what's in the current remote directory, you can use the program's ls
88 and dir commands. The former is terse, preferring more remote files in
89 less screen space, and the latter is more verbose, giving detailed
90 information about each item in the directory.
91 You can use the program's cd command to move to other directories on
93 the remote system. The cd command behaves very much like the command
94 of the same name in the Bourne and Korn shell.
95 The purpose of the program is to exchange data with other systems. You
97 can use the program's get command to copy a file from the remote system
98 to your local system:
99 get README.txt
101 The program will display the progress of the transfer on the screen, so
103 you can tell how much needs to be done before the transfer finishes.
104 When the transfer does finish, then you can enter more commands to the
105 program's command shell.
106 You can use the program's put command to copy a file from your system
108 to the remote system:
109 put something.tar
111 When you are finished using the remote system, you can open another one
113 or use the quit
114 Before quitting, you may want to save the current FTP session's set‐
116 tings for later. You can use the bookmark command to save an entry
117 into your $HOME/.ncftp/bookmarks file. When you use the bookmark com‐
118 mand, you also specify a bookmark name, so the next time instead of
119 opening the full hostname you can use the name of the bookmark. A
120 bookmark acts just like one for your web browser, so it saves the
121 remote directory you were in, the account name you used, etc., and
122 other information it learned so that the next time you use the bookmark
123 it should require as little effort from you as possible.
124 COMMAND REFERENCE
126 help The first command to know is help. If you just type
127 help
129 from the command shell, the program prints the names of all of
131 the supported commands. From there, you can get specific help
132 for a command by typing the command after, for example:
133 help open
135 prints information about the open command.
137 ascii This command sets the transfer type to ASCII text. This is use‐
139 ful for text-only transfers because the concept of text files
140 differs between operating systems. For example on UNIX, a text
141 file denotes line breaks with the linefeed character, while on
142 MS-DOS a line break is denoted by both a carriage return charac‐
143 ter and a line feed character. Therefore, for data transfers
144 that you consider the data as text you can use ascii to ensure
145 that both the remote system and local system translate accord‐
146 ingly. The default transfer type that ncftp uses is not ASCII,
147 but straight binary.
148 bgget and bgput
150 These commands correspond to the get and put commands explained
151 below, except that they do the job in the background. Normally
152 when you do a get then the program does the download immedi‐
153 ately, and does not return control to you until the download
154 completes. The background transfers are nice because you can
155 continue browsing the remote filesystem and even open other sys‐
156 tems. In fact, they are done by a daemon process, so even if
157 you log off your UNIX host the daemon should still do your
158 transfers. The daemon will also automatically continue to retry
159 the transfers until they finish. To tell when background jobs
160 have finished, you have to examine the $HOME/.ncftp/spool/log
161 file, or run the jobs command from within NcFTP.
162 Both the bgget and bgput commands allow you to schedule when to
164 do the transfers. They take a ``-@'' parameter, whose argument
165 is a date of the form YYYYMMDDhhmmss (four digit year, month,
166 day, hour, minute, second). For example, to schedule a download
167 at 3 AM on November 6, you could try:
168 bgget -@ 19971106030000 /pub/idstuff/quake/q2_100.zip
170 bgstart
172 This command tells ncftp to immediately start the background
173 transfers you've requested, which simply runs a copy of the
174 ncftpbatch program which is responsible for the background jobs.
175 Normally the program will start the background job as soon as
176 you close the current site, open a new site, or quit the pro‐
177 gram. The reason for this is because since so many users still
178 use slow dialup links that starting the transfers would slow
179 things to a crawl, making it difficult to browse the remote sys‐
180 tem. An added bonus of starting the background job when you
181 close the site is that ncftp can pass off that open connection
182 to the ncftpbatch program. That is nice when the site is always
183 busy, so that the background job doesn't have to wait and get
184 re-logged on to do its job.
185 binary Sets the transfer type to raw binary, so that no translation is
187 done on the data transferred. This is the default anyway, since
188 most files are in binary.
189 bookmark
191 Saves the current session settings for later use. This is use‐
192 ful to save the remote system and remote working directory so
193 you can quickly resume where you left off some other time. The
194 bookmark data is stored in your $HOME/.ncftp/bookmarks file.
195 bookmarks
197 Lists the contents of your $HOME/.ncftp/bookmarks file in a
198 human-readable format. You can use this command to recall the
199 bookmark name of a previously saved bookmark, so that you can
200 use the open command with it.
201 cat Acts like the ``/bin/cat'' UNIX command, only for remote files.
203 This downloads the file you specify and dumps it directly to the
204 screen. You will probably find the page command more useful,
205 since that lets you view the file one screen at a time instead
206 of printing the entire file at once.
207 cd Changes the working directory on the remote host. Use this com‐
209 mand to move to different areas on the remote server. If you
210 just opened a new site, you might be in the root directory.
211 Perhaps there was a directory called
212 ``/pub/news/comp.sources.d'' that someone told you about. From
213 the root directory, you could:
214 cd pub
216 cd news
217 cd comp.sources.d
218 or, more concisely,
220 cd /pub/news/comp.sources.d
222 Then, commands such as get, put, and ls could be used to refer
224 to items in that directory.
225 Some shells in the UNIX environment have a feature I like, which
227 is switching to the previous directory. Like those shells, you
228 can do:
229 cd -
231 to change to the last directory you were in.
233 chmod Acts like the ``/bin/chmod'' UNIX command, only for remote
235 files. However, this is not a standard command, so remote FTP
236 servers may not support it.
237 close Disconnects you from the remote server. The program does this
239 for you automatically when needed, so you can simply open other
240 sites or quit the program without worrying about closing the
241 connection by hand.
242 debug This command is mostly for internal testing. You could type
244 debug 1
246 to turn debugging mode on. Then you could see all messages
248 between the program and the remote server, and things that are
249 only printed in debugging mode. However, this information is
250 also available in the $HOME/.ncftp/trace file, which is created
251 each time you run ncftp. If you need to report a bug, send a
252 trace file if you can.
253 dir Prints a detailed directory listing. It tries to behave like
255 UNIX's ``/bin/ls -l'' command. If the remote server seems to be
256 a UNIX host, you can also use the same flags you would with ls,
257 for instance
258 dir -rt
260 would try to act like
262 /bin/ls -lrt
264 would on UNIX.
266 edit Downloads into a temporary file for editing on the local host,
268 then uploads the changed file back to the remote host.
269 get Copies files from the current working directory on the remote
271 host to your machine's current working directory. To place a
272 copy of ``README'' and ``README.too'' in your local directory,
273 you could try:
274 get README README.too
276 You could also accomplish that by using a wildcard expression,
278 such as:
279 get README*
281 This command is similar to the behavior of other FTP programs'
283 mget command. To retrieve a remote file but give it a different
284 name on your host, you can use the ``-z'' flag. This example
285 shows how to download a file called ReadMe.txt but name it
286 locally as README:
287 get -z ReadMe.txt README
289 The program tries to ``resume'' downloads by default. This
291 means that if the remote FTP server lost the connection and was
292 only able to send 490 kilobytes of a 500 kilobyte file, you
293 could reconnect to the FTP server and do another get on the same
294 file name and it would get the last 10 kilobytes, instead of
295 retrieving the entire file again. There are some occasions
296 where you may not want that behavior. To turn it off you can
297 use the ``-f'' flag.
298 There are also times where you want to append to an existing
300 file. You can do this by using the ``-A'' flag, for example
301 get -A log.11
303 would append to a file named ``log.11'' if it existed locally.
305 Another thing you can do is delete a remote file after you down‐
307 load it. This can be useful when a remote host expects a file
308 to be removed when it has been retrieved. Use the double-D
309 flag, such as ``get -DD'' to do this.
310 The get command lets you retrieve entire directory trees, too.
312 Although it may not work with some remote systems, you can try
313 ``get -R'' with a directory to download the directory and its
314 contents.
315 When using the ``-R'' flag, you can also use the ``-T'' flag to
317 disable automatic on-the-fly TAR mode for downloading whole
318 directory trees. The program uses TAR whenever possible since
319 this usually preserves symbolic links and file permissions. TAR
320 mode can also result in faster transfers for directories con‐
321 taining many small files, since a single data connection can be
322 used rather than an FTP data connection for each small file. The
323 downside to using TAR is that it forces downloading of the whole
324 directory, even if you had previously downloaded a portion of it
325 earlier, so you may want to use this option if you want to
326 resume downloading of a directory.
327 jobs Views the list of currently executing NcFTP background tasks.
329 This actually just runs ncftpbatch -l for you.
330 lcd The lcd command is the first of a few ``l'' commands that work
332 with the local host. This changes the current working directory
333 on the local host. If you want to download files into a differ‐
334 ent local directory, you could use lcd to change to that direc‐
335 tory and then do your downloads.
336 lchmod Runs ``/bin/chmod'' on the local host.
338 lls Another local command that comes in handy is the lls command,
340 which runs ``/bin/ls'' on the local host and displays the
341 results in the program's window. You can use the same flags
342 with lls as you would in your command shell, so you can do
343 things like:
344 lcd ~/doc
346 lls -lrt p*.txt
347 lmkdir Runs ``/bin/mkdir'' on the local host.
349 lookup The program also has a built-in interface to the name service
351 via the lookup command. This means you can lookup entries for
352 remote hosts, like:
353 lookup cse.unl.edu ftp.cs.unl.edu sphygmomanometer.unl.edu
355 prints:
357 cse.unl.edu 129.93.33.1
359 typhoon.unl.edu 129.93.33.24
360 sphygmomanometer.unl.edu 129.93.33.126
361 There is also a more detailed option, enabled with ``-v,'' i.e.:
363 lookup -v cse.unl.edu ftp.cs.unl.edu
365 prints:
367 cse.unl.edu:
369 Name: cse.unl.edu
370 Address: 129.93.33.1
371 ftp.cs.unl.edu:
373 Name: typhoon.unl.edu
374 Alias: ftp.cs.unl.edu
375 Address: 129.93.33.24
376 You can also give IP addresses, so this would work too:
378 lookup 129.93.33.24
380 prints:
382 typhoon.unl.edu 129.93.33.24
384 lpage Views a local file one page at a time, with your preferred
386 $PAGER program.
387 lpwd Prints the current local directory. Use this command when you
389 forget where you are on your local machine.
390 lrename
392 Runs ``/bin/mv'' on the local host.
393 lrm Runs ``/bin/rm'' on the local host.
395 lrmdir Runs ``/bin/rmdir'' on the local host.
397 ls Prints a directory listing from the remote system. It tries to
399 behave like UNIX's ``/bin/ls -CF'' command. If the remote
400 server seems to be a UNIX host, you can also use the same flags
401 you would with ls, for instance
402 ls -rt
404 would try to act like
406 /bin/ls -CFrt
408 would on UNIX.
410 ncftp has a powerful built-in system for dealing with directory
412 listings. It tries to cache each one, so if you list the same
413 directory, odds are it will display instantly. Behind the
414 scenes, ncftp always tries a long listing, and then reformats it
415 as it needs to. So even if your first listing of a directory
416 was a regular ``ls'' which displayed the files in columns, your
417 next listing could be ``ls -lrt'' and ncftp would still use the
418 cached directory listing to quickly display the information for
419 you!
420 mkdir Creates a new directory on the remote host. For many public ar‐
422 chives, you won't have the proper access permissions to do that.
423 open Establishes an FTP control connection to a remote host. By
425 default, ncftp logs in anonymously to the remote host. You may
426 want to use a specific user account when you log in, so you can
427 use the ``-u'' flag to specify which user. This example shows
428 how to open the host ``bowser.nintendo.co.jp'' using the user‐
429 name ``mario:''
430 open -u mario bowser.nintendo.co.jp
432 Here is a list of options available for use with the open com‐
434 mand:
435 -u XX Use username XX instead of anonymous.
437 -p XX Use password XX with the username.
439 -j XX Use account XX in supplement to the username and password
441 (deprecated).
442 -P XX Use port number XX instead of the default FTP service port
444 (21).
445 page Browses a remote file one page at a time, using your $PAGER pro‐
447 gram. This is useful for reading README's on the remote host
448 without downloading them first.
449 pdir and pls
451 These commands are equivalent to dir and ls respectively, only
452 they feed their output to your pager. These commands are useful
453 if the directory listing scrolls off your screen.
454 put Copies files from the local host to the remote machine's current
456 working directory. To place a copy of ``xx.zip'' and ``yy.zip''
457 in the remote directory, you could try:
458 put xx.zip yy.zip
460 You could also accomplish that by using a wildcard expression,
462 such as:
463 put *.zip
465 This command is similar to the behavior of other FTP programs'
467 mput command. To send a remote file but give it a different
468 name on your host, you can use the ``-z'' flag. This example
469 shows how to upload a file called ``ncftpd-2.0.6.tar.gz'' but
470 name it remotely as ``NFTPD206.TGZ:''
471 put -z ncftpd-2.0.6.tar.gz NFTPD206.TGZ
473 The program does not try to ``resume'' uploads by default. If
475 you do want to resume an upload, use the ``-z'' flag.
476 There are also times where you want to append to an existing
478 remote file. You can do this by using the ``-A'' flag, for
479 example
480 put -A log11.txt
482 would append to a file named ``log11.txt'' if it existed on the
484 remote server.
485 Another thing you can do is delete a local file after you upload
487 it. Use the double-D flag, such as ``put -DD'' to do this.
488 The put command lets you send entire directory trees, too. It
490 should work on all remote systems, so you can try ``put -R''
491 with a directory to upload the directory and its contents.
492 pwd Prints the current remote working directory. A portion of the
494 pathname is also displayed in the shell's prompt.
495 quit Of course, when you finish using the program, type quit to end
497 the program (You could also use bye, exit, or ^D).
498 quote This can be used to send a direct FTP Protocol command to the
500 remote server. Generally this isn't too useful to the average
501 user.
502 rename If you need to change the name of a remote file, you can use the
504 rename command, like:
505 rename SPHYGMTR.TAR sphygmomanometer-2.3.1.tar
507 rhelp Sends a help request to the remote server. The list of FTP Pro‐
509 tocol commands is often printed, and sometimes some other infor‐
510 mation that is actually useful, like how to reach the site
511 administrator.
512 Depending on the remote server, you may be able to give a param‐
514 eter to the server also, like:
515 rhelp NLST
517 One server responded:
519 Syntax: NLST [ <sp> path-name ]
521 rm If you need to delete a remote file you can try the rm command.
523 Much of the time this won't work because you won't have the
524 proper access permissions. This command doesn't accept any
525 flags, so you can't nuke a whole tree by using ``-rf'' flags
526 like you can on UNIX.
527 rmdir Similarly, the rmdir command removes a directory. Depending on
529 the remote server, you may be able to remove a non-empty direc‐
530 tory, so be careful.
531 set This lets you configure some program variables, which are saved
533 between runs in the $HOME/.ncftp/prefs file. The basic syntax
534 is:
535 set <option> <value>
537 For example, to change the value you use for the anonymous pass‐
539 word, you might do:
540 set anon-password devnull@example.com
542 See the next section for a list of things you change.
544 show This lets you display program variables. You can do
546 ``show all'' to display all of them, or give a variable name to
547 just display that one, such as:
548 show anon-password
550 site One obscure command you may have to use someday is site. The
552 FTP Protocol allows for ``site specific'' commands. These
553 ``site'' commands vary of course, such as:
554 site chmod 644 README
556 Actually, ncftp's chmod command really does the above.
558 Try doing one of these to see what the remote server supports,
560 if any:
561 rhelp SITE
563 site help
564 type You may need to change transfer types during the course of a
566 session with a server. You can use the type command to do this.
567 Try one of these:
568 type ascii
570 type binary
571 type image
572 The ascii command is equivalent to ``type a'', and the binary
574 command is equivalent to ``type i'' and ``type b''.
575 umask Sets the process' umask on the remote server, if it has any con‐
577 cept of a umask, i.e.:
578 umask 077
580 However, this is not a standard command, so remote FTP servers
582 may not support it.
583 version
585 This command dumps some information about the particular edition
586 of the program you are using, and how it was installed on your
587 system.
588 VARIABLE REFERENCE
590 anon-password
591 Specifies what to use for the password when logging in anony‐
592 mously. Internet convention has been to use your E-mail address
593 as a courtesy to the site administrator. If you change this, be
594 aware that some sites require (i.e. they check for) valid E-mail
595 addresses.
596 auto-resume
598 NcFTP 3 now prompts the user by default when you try to download
599 a file that already exists locally, or upload a file that
600 already exists remotely. Older versions of the program automat‐
601 ically guessed whether to overwrite the existing file or attempt
602 to resume where it left off, but sometimes the program would
603 guess wrong. If you would prefer that the program always guess
604 which action to take, set this variable to yes, otherwise, leave
605 it set to no and the program will prompt you for which action to
606 take.
607 auto-ascii
609 If set to a list of pipe-character delimited extensions, files
610 with these extensions will be sent in ASCII mode even if binary
611 mode is currently in effect. This option allows you to transfer
612 most files in binary, with the exception of a few well-known
613 file types that should be sent in ASCII. This option is enabled
614 by default, and set to a list of common extensions (e.g., .txt
615 and .html).
616 autosave-bookmark-changes
618 With the advent of version 3 of NcFTP, the program treats book‐
619 marks more like they would with your web browser, which means
620 that once you bookmark the site, the remote directory is static.
621 If you set this variable to yes, then the program will automati‐
622 cally update the bookmark's starting remote directory with the
623 directory you were in when you closed the site. This behavior
624 would be more like that of NcFTP version 2.
625 confirm-close
627 By default the program will ask you when a site you haven't
628 bookmarked is about to be closed. To turn this prompt off, you
629 can set this variable to no.
630 connect-timeout
632 Previous versions of the program used a single timeout value for
633 everything. You can now have different values for different
634 operations. However, you probably do not need to change these
635 from the defaults unless you have special requirements.
636 The connect-timeout variable controls how long to wait, in sec‐
638 onds, for a connection establishment to complete before consid‐
639 ering it hopeless. You can choose to not use a timeout at all
640 by setting this to -1.
641 control-timeout
643 This is the timer used when ncftp sends an FTP command over the
644 control connection to the remote server. If the server hasn't
645 replied in that many seconds, it considers the session lost.
646 logsize
648 This is controls how large the transfer log ($HOME/.ncftp/log)
649 can grow to, in kilobytes. The default is 200, for 200kB; if
650 you don't want a log, set this to 0.
651 pager This is the external program to use to view a text file, and is
653 more by default.
654 passive
656 This controls ncftp's behavior for data connections, and can be
657 set to one of on, off, or the default, optional. When passive
658 mode is on, ncftp uses the FTP command primitive PASV to have
659 the client establish data connections to the server. The
660 default FTP protocol behavior is to use the FTP command primi‐
661 tive PORT which has the server establish data connections to the
662 client. The default setting for this variable, optional, allows
663 ncftp to choose whichever method it deems necessary.
664 progress-meter
666 You can change how the program reports file transfer status.
667 Select from meter 2, 1, or 0.
668 redial-delay
670 When a host is busy or unavailable, the program waits this num‐
671 ber of seconds before trying again. The smallest you can set
672 this is to 10 seconds -- so if you were planning on being incon‐
673 siderate, think again.
674 save-passwords
676 If you set this variable to yes, the program will save passwords
677 along with the bookmarks you save. While this makes non-anony‐
678 mous logins more convenient, this can be very dangerous since
679 your account information is now sitting in the
680 $HOME/.ncftp/bookmarks file. The passwords aren't in clear
681 text, but it is still trivial to decode them if someone wants to
682 make a modest effort.
683 show-status-in-xterm-titlebar
685 If set to yes and operating from within an xterm window, the
686 program will change the window's titlebar accordingly.
687 so-bufsize
689 If your operating system supports TCP Large Windows, you can try
690 setting this variable to the number of bytes to set the TCP/IP
691 socket buffer to. This option won't be of much use unless the
692 remote server also supports large window sizes and is pre-con‐
693 figured with them enabled.
694 xfer-timeout
696 This timer controls how long to wait for data blocks to com‐
697 plete. Don't set this too low or else your transfers will time‐
698 out without completing.
699 FIREWALL AND PROXY CONFIGURATION
701 You may find that your network administrator has placed a firewall
702 between your machine and the Internet, and that you cannot reach exter‐
703 nal hosts.
704 The answer may be as simple as setting ncftp to use passive mode only,
706 which you can do from a ncftp command prompt like this:
707 set passive on
709 The reason for this is because many firewalls do not allow incoming
711 connections to the site, but do allow users to establish outgoing con‐
712 nections. A passive data connection is established by the client to
713 the server, whereas the default is for the server to establish the con‐
714 nection to the client, which firewalls may object to. Of course, you
715 now may have problems with sites whose primitive FTP servers do not
716 support passive mode.
717 Otherwise, if you know you need to have ncftp communicate directly with
719 a firewall or proxy, you can try editing the separate
720 $HOME/.ncftp/firewall configuration file. This file is created auto‐
721 matically the first time you run the program, and contains all the
722 information you need to get the program to work in this setup.
723 The basics of this process are configuring a firewall (proxy) host to
725 go through, a user account and password for authentication on the fire‐
726 wall, and which type of firewall method to use. You can also setup an
727 exclusion list, so that ncftp does not use the firewall for hosts on
728 the local network.
729
731 $HOME/.ncftp/bookmarks
732 Saves bookmark and host information.
733 $HOME/.ncftp/firewall
735 Firewall access configuration file.
736 $HOME/.ncftp/prefs
738 Program preferences.
739 $HOME/.ncftp/trace
741 Debugging output for entire program run.
742 $HOME/.ncftp/v3init
744 Used to tell if this version of the program has run before.
745 $HOME/.ncftp/spool/
747 Directory where background jobs are stored in the form of spool
748 configuration files.
749 $HOME/.ncftp/spool/log
751 Information for background data transfer processes.
752
754 PATH User's search path, used to find the ncftpbatch program, pager,
755 and some other system utilities.
756 PAGER Program to use to view text files one page at a time.
758 TERM If the program was compiled with support for GNU Readline it
760 will need to know how to manipulate the terminal correctly for
761 line-editing, etc. The pager program will also take advantage
762 of this setting.
763 HOME By default, the program writes its configuration data in a
765 .ncftp subdirectory of the HOME directory.
766 NCFTPDIR
768 If set, the program will use this directory instead of
769 $HOME/.ncftp. This variable is optional except for those users
770 whose home directory is the root directory.
771 COLUMNS
773 Both the built-in ls command and the external ls command need
774 this to determine how many screen columns the terminal has.
775
777 There are no such sites named bowser.nintendo.co.jp or sphygmomanome‐
778 ter.unl.edu.
779 Auto-resume should check the file timestamps instead of relying upon
781 just the file sizes, but it is difficult to do this reliably within
782 FTP.
783 Directory caching and recursive downloads depend on UNIX-like behavior
785 of the remote host.
786
788 Mike Gleason, NcFTP Software (http://www.ncftp.com).
789
791 ncftpput(1), ncftpget(1), ncftpbatch(1), ftp(1), rcp(1), tftp(1).
792 LibNcFTP (http://www.ncftp.com/libncftp).
794 NcFTPd (http://www.ncftp.com/ncftpd).
796
798 Thanks to everyone who uses the program. Your support is what drives
799 me to improve the program!
800 I thank Dale Botkin and Tim Russell at my former ISP, Probe Technology.
802 Ideas and some code contributed by my partner, Phil Dietz.
804 Thanks to Brad Mittelstedt and Chris Tjon, for driving and refining the
806 development of the backbone of this project, LibNcFTP.
807 I'd like to thank my former system administrators, most notably Charles
809 Daniel, for making testing on a variety of platforms possible, letting
810 me have some extra disk space, and for maintaining the UNL FTP site.
811 For testing versions 1 and 2 above and beyond the call of duty, I am
813 especially grateful to: Phil Dietz, Kok Hon Yin, and Andrey A. Chernov
814 (ache@astral.msk.su).
815 Thanks to Tim MacKenzie (t.mackenzie@trl.oz.au) for the original file‐
817 name completion code for version 2.3.0 and 2.4.2.
818 Thanks to DaviD W. Sanderson (dws@ora.com), for helping me out with the
820 man page.
821 Thanks to those of you at UNL who appreciate my work.
823 Thanks to Red Hat Software for honoring my licensing agreement, but
825 more importantly, thanks for providing a solid and affordable develop‐
826 ment platform.
827
829 To the users, for not being able to respond personally to most of your
830 inquiries.
831 To Phil, for things not being the way they should be.
833ncftp NcFTP Software ncftp(1)