Linux, FreeBSD, Juniper, Cisco / Network security articles and troubleshooting guides

How to use ftpproxy in a unix script

My apologies if this goes in twice.

We have a client who only uses ftp for file transfers. On our Unix server I can use the following at the command line and I can access the client ftp server. How can I use this in a script?

ftp ftpproxy <enter>
userid@host <enter>
password <enter>

Hi,

Have you checked “expect” interpreter ? You can use it to automate authentication system that require human interraction.

Here’s an example to automat FTP login with this “expect”:

Expect installation under Debian Linux

Automate FTP login with expect script

Few notes on above ftp script:
- you need to send the linux new line feed (the ENTER) character ‘\r’ at the end of every command.
- you can further customize it to upload or download files from the ftp server automatically:

Quoting expect documentation:

Then to run the auto ftp script:

Thanks! This works as well
ftp -vn <<EOF
open ftpproxy
userid@host password
cd /wherever/the/file/is
get file
close
EOF

Good that it works for you. It does not for me on BSD / MAC ftp.