Command Line Tools
Command line tools
Command line tools can be much quicker to use although less user friendly since you need to remember particular options rather than picking from menus etc.
RSYNC
rsync is particularly useful to synchronise a set of files from one system to another, e.g.
rsync -aHSv username@gate.maths.ox.ac.uk: copy_of_maths_account
would sync a copy of all the files in your maths account to a folder on your local (typically non-maths) machines called copy_of_maths_account. If this command is interrupted you can simply restart it and it will work out what remains to be synced. Note the options above do not cause it to delete files in the local copy that have since been removed from the remote copy, if you want to do that too then include the options --force --delete
SCP
scp is a secure copy command. It uses ssh for data transfer, and uses the same authentication and provides the same security as ssh. To copy a file from a remote machine the command would be of the form
scp username@fully_qualified_machine_name:path_to_file destination_file_name
For example
scp bloggs@gate.maths.ox.ac.uk:filename .
would copy the file called filename from my home directory on the MI computer system to my current directory on my local machine keeping the name the same (the . dot being the destination name meaning this directory with the same name).
SFTP
sftp should work in the same way as ftp described below except that for the data transfer it will use ssh and thus be secure (e.g. no clear text password is sent).
FTP
This is the standard method for transferring files to and from machines connected to the internet (for example most of the computers in the University).
The following are a list of commonly used commands:
- cd
- Changes between directories.
- ls
- Lists files in a directory.
- pwd
- Prints working directory.
- ascii
- Puts file transfer in ASCII mode (text files).
- binary
- Puts file transfer in binary mode for non-text files.
- bye
- Quits ftp.
- get
- Gets a remote file.
- put
- Puts a local file on the remote system.
- prompt
- Forces (non)-interactive prompting on ``multiple'' commands
- mget
- Gets multiple files.
- mput
- Puts multiple files.
So, for example,
alph% ftp sable
Connected to sable.
220 sable.ox.ac.uk FTP server ready.
Name (sable:newuser): anonymous
331 Guest login ok, send your complete e-mail address as password.
Password:
230-Trouble from multi-line replies? Reconnect with a '-' before the password.
230-
230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply.
Remote system type is Unix.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp> cd pub
250-Please read the file README
250- it was last modified on Thu Dec 22 12:09:42 1994 - 53 days ago
250 CWD command successful.
ftp> ascii
200 Type set to A.
ftp> get README
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for README (1640 bytes).
226 Transfer complete.
1689 bytes received in 0.099 seconds (17 Kbytes/s)
ftp> bye
221 Goodbye.
alph%
Anonymous FTP
In anonymous FTP, you use the standard FTP commands described above, but this time when asked to login you use the username anonymous. You will then usually be prompted to ``Enter your e-mail address as password''. Usually @email will suffice.