How To Transfer Files Using FTP
FTP File Transfer
FTP stands for file transfer protocol. This is used for
transferring files either from your computer to a server
(uploading) or from a server to your computer
(downloading). There are two main ways of accessing FTP.
- Through the browser itself. This is convenient when you wish
to download a single file and you have an ftp-type URL starting
with "ftp:" such as
ftp://cs.um.edu.mt/pub/staff/mros/download/ftp.txt
In such a case all you need do is
- Type the i in the location box followed by carriage return.
- You will then be prompted for a filename via the usual dialogue
on your local machine.
- The remote file will be transferred to your local file.
Sometimes you are not given the URL as such. Instead, you would
be told to
"get the file ftp.txt from the
server cs.um.edu.mt in the directory /pub/staff/mros/download..
Clearly, you do the same as above but you need to know
which parts of the URL go where.
- Through a program external to the program. There
are two reasons why we might not wish to access FTP through the
browser:
- Not all browsers have facilites for uploading. Those
that do are not used in the same way.
- All built in FTPs are oriented towards the transfer of
single files. None of them offer facilities for the transfer of
directories.
For these reasons we will make use of the program SmartFTP to effect FTP
transfers during the course.
Mike Rosner (mros@cs.um.edu.mt)
Last modified: Fri Feb 26 11:13:33 1999