Bash Script for FTP login

**phossal** · February 13th, 2007

I would like a simple script to automate logging in to my FTP server, which requires authentication in clear text. I know, of course, how to launch a script that asks to open the ftp connection, but I don't know bash well enough to get it to supply the username and password. Of course, I can implement this in other languages, but I don't want to.

Can anyone give me a lesson?

**Tomosaur** · February 13th, 2007

Does your ftp program support supplying the user and pass directly from the command line? If so, just use that. If you're unsure, just check out the man page and see what obscure nuggets of information are there.

**phossal** · February 13th, 2007

Maybe I wasn't clear. Currently, I can open a terminal and type "ftp". That opens ftp in my terminal. Then I use open destination. That establishes a connection to my ftp server, which prompts me for my username. I just want a script that will do this for me, so I don't have to keep doing it manually. I don't to keep manually typing the same set of commands each time I need to connect.

**yaaarrrgg** · February 13th, 2007

You might check out scp .... it's more secure than ftp and will probably do more what you want.

You can set up a cert so that you do not have to login to transfer files.

Also, I have shell aliases set up, so that moving files around looks like this:

Code:

#copies file  somefile.txt  to a server set in variable $server1

scp somefile.txt $server1:

**ghostdog74** · February 13th, 2007

Originally Posted by phossal

Maybe I wasn't clear. Currently, I can open a terminal and type "ftp". That opens ftp in my terminal. Then I use open destination. That establishes a connection to my ftp server, which prompts me for my username. I just want a script that will do this for me, so I don't have to keep doing it manually. I don't to keep manually typing the same set of commands each time I need to connect.

basic way of doing this

Code:

ftp -n -i <<_EOF_
open hostname
user username password
bin
cd "$DEST_DIR"
lcd "$SRC_DIR"
mget *
quit
_EOF_

**supirman** · February 13th, 2007

use sftp. Then you can set up your keys to allow passwordless login via ssh and sftp. To log into your sftp session, it's as simple as

Code:

sftp user@host

with no passwords.

**SuperMike** · February 14th, 2007

Do it with 'Expect' and hook it through 'Bash'.

**supirman** · February 14th, 2007

Here you go:

Code:

sudo apt-get install expect

Then take this code:

Code:

#!/usr/bin/env expect

set username yourUsername
set pass yourPasswd
set host theHost

spawn ftp ${username}@${host}
expect "Password:"
send "${pass}\r"
expect "ftp> "
interact

and put it into a file, say autoftp, then

Code: