LFTP
Intro
LFTP is an enhanced sftp client that allows faster parallel down and uploads as well as a more convenient interface
Documentation
LFTP Documentation can be found here http://lftp.yar.ru/
Getting and installing
Most current Linux distributions offer lftp through their package management. However they carry mostly rather old versions which have annoying bugs.
We suggest to use at least lftp versions above 4.7.x. The LFTP web site offers source packages that enable you to compile the most recent version. Check the README and the INSTALL files in the documentation of lftp.
To install lftp using your distribution package management tool
yum install lftp sudo apt-get install lftp
Using
Log in with your archive account
lftp -u <abc> sftp://archive-sftp.lsdf.kit.edu Password: <password>
Usage examples
Upload a local file (lfile) to the archive:
lftp>put lfile
Upload, reverse mirror (-R), a local directory (ldir) to a remote directory (rdir) using 4 processes. Use the --continue (-c) option to allow the mirror operation to continue where it left off in case something happens (usefull if you archive thousands of files and directories).
lftp>mirror -c -R --parallel=4 ldir rdir
Download a remote directory using 4 streams for every single file. (This improves download speeds for large i.e. more than 100 MB, files):
lftp>mirror -c --use-pget-n=4 rdir ldir
From the command line to copy a whole directory towards the archive and redirection of the output:
lftp -u <username>,<password> -e "mirror --reverse -v <source directory> ./private/<destination>/;quit" sftp://archive-sftp.lsdf.kit.edu 2> error_output.txt 1> stdoout.txt
The advantage of the last command is that the verbose output. The error output and the standard out is in seperate files, as such the error messages are clear identified. The standout still allows to see each single file which has been transfered. Please be aware that the password is written in clear text on the command line and can be found in the history, this is just an example and should be avoided.
Many examples with explanations can be found here: LFTP use examples
