How do I copy a file over FTP using Ubuntu Linux?

I'm using Ubuntu Software Center 2.0.7, and I would like to copy a file from this machine over FTP. Can you please help me how to do it?

I know in Windows I just open a Windows Explorer window and type ftp.www.mysite.com. Then it will ask for the user name and password.

I would like to do the same in my Ubuntu Linux, but I don't know how.

Solution 1:

The easiest way to do this would be to open a terminal and use wget:

$ wget ftp://ftp.mysite.com/path/to/file

You need to replace "path/to/file/ with the path of the file you want to download. That is, the address where the file is found on the disk. So, to get a file called file.txt that is in sub directory foo of directory bar, you would write:

$ wget ftp://ftp.mysite.com/foo/bar/file.txt

If your ftp server requires a username and password:

$ wget ftp://username:[email protected]/foo/bar/file.txt

Replacing "username" and "password" with your actual username and password. Do not include the $ in any of these commands.

From the wget man page:

GNU Wget is a free utility for non-interactive download of files from the Web. It supports HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP protocols, as well as retrieval through HTTP proxies.

You can also use ftp from the command line:

$ ftp ftp.mysite.com

Enter your user name and password, then use put to upload the file:

ftp>put local_file remote_file

For example:

ftp>put Downloads/List/Song.mp3 Song.mp3

Do not include the ftp> in your command. That just indicates the ftp prompt.

Finally, you either use a normal browser (eg firefox) or install a graphical ftp client. My personal favorite is gftp:

$ sudo apt-get install gftp

Oh, and you are not using Ubuntu Software Center 2.0.7. That is just Ubuntu's software management app.

Note on terminology

When a terminal command is given, the symbol $ is used to indicate that it is a terminal command. See here for a discussion. It is not part of the actuall command. So, to tell you to run the command ls, I would write $ ls. You, however, should only type ls, without the $.

Solution 2:

In Nautilus or Firefox, you can input in the address bar:

ftp://[email protected]