LFTP - a sophisticated ftp/http client

11 Sep 2014

The author of the famous LFTP tool, defines it as a sophisticated ftp/http client. After using it for a couple of months, I can now attest to that claim. It is feature loaded and provide many niceties. Some of the features I use regularly are segmented downloads (splitting a file into parts and transferring those parts concurrently), queues, directory download/upload and resume.

Quick reference:

Download a directory

mirror -c –use-pget-n=3 dir_name

c => resume

use-pget-n => segmented download with 3 chunks

Upload a directory

mirror -R -c –use-pget-n=3

Put current command in background

Ctrl-Z

Bring backgrounded command back

wait

Create an empty queue

queue stop queue (if no queue exists)

Queue status (execute only if queue exists, otherwise it would create an empty queue)

queue

Add current executing command to queue

queue wait 0

Stop further queued actions (but keep current ones going)

queue stop

Start all stopped queues

Exit out of lftp. Upon exit it automatically starts all stopped queues

It can use the SSH Agent to connect using already added keys. On my raspberrypi, I do the following for SFTP connection using SSH Agent

Start SSH agent

Add desired key to SSH agent (PS: On raspberry pi, need to execute ‘eval ‘$(ssh-agent)’)

lftp sftp://@

If asks for password, but hitting ENTER key allows it to connect using the SSH agent.