Login with Linux FTP username and password

What's the command for logging in with FTP all with one line?

ftp username:[email protected]

says:

Password required for username:password

Solution 1:

ftp -nv yourftpserver.com

then user your_username or user anonymous

I posted this answer since ftp ftp://username:[email protected] did not work for me.

Usage: { ftp | pftp } [-46pinegvtd] [hostname]
   -4: use IPv4 addresses only
   -6: use IPv6, nothing else
   -p: enable passive mode (default for pftp)
   -i: turn off prompting during mget
   -n: inhibit auto-login
   -e: disable readline support, if present
   -g: disable filename globbing
   -v: verbose mode
   -t: enable packet tracing [nonfunctional]
   -d: enable debugging

Solution 2:

The best option is to use a .netrc along with something like gpg for security purposes.

I've written a general purpose script for this, which I may upload later, but it boils down to:

gpg -c .netrc

or optionally with a passphrase on the commandline and an output destination:

gpg --passphrase <secretphrase> -o .netrc.gpg -c .netrc

Not shown here, but you could additionally use asymmetric keys (if you have them setup) with gpg to make this even more secure.

Then when you are ready to login

gpg .netrc.gpg
# or
gpg --passphrase <secretphrase> -o .netrc .netrc.gpg
ftp yourservername
rm .netrc

An example .netrc:

machine google.com
login <username>
password <secretpassword>

I actually keep a local hash and the original copy of these files on a different computer than the one I that I use the .netrc files on, and verify the hash of the .netrc and the script that I run, but that is above and beyond the OP's original question.

Solution 3:

You can try

my_ftp() {
  ftp -i -n <<EOF
    open $HOST
    user "$USER" "$PASS"
    $@
EOF
}

which you then can call with my_ftp $'ls subfolder\nanothercommand'

This solution is not interactive but the best I could figure out

edit: You are probably best off to just use curl instead.