man pages section 1: User Commands

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Updated: July 2014
 
 

ncftp (1)

Name

ncftp - Browser program for the File Transfer Protocol

Synopsis

ncftp [host]

ncftp [ftp://host.name/directory/]

Description




User Commands                                            ncftp(1)



NAME
     ncftp - Browser program for the File Transfer Protocol

SYNOPSIS
     ncftp [host]

     ncftp [ftp://host.name/directory/]

DESCRIPTION
     The  purpose  of ncftp is to provide a powerful and flexible
     interface to the Internet standard File  Transfer  Protocol.
     It  is  intended to replace the stock ftp program that comes
     with the system.

     Although the program appears to be  rather  spartan,  you'll
     find  that  ncftp  has  a wealth of valuable performance and
     usage features.  The program was designed with  an  emphasis
     on usability, and it does as much as it can for you automat-
     ically so you can do what you  expect  to  do  with  a  file
     transfer program, which is transfer files between two inter-
     connected systems.

     Some of the cooler features include progress  meters,  file-
     name  completion,  command-line editing, background process-
     ing, auto-resume downloads,  bookmarking,  cached  directory
     listings,  host  redialing, working with firewalls and prox-
     ies, downloading entire directory trees, etc., etc.

     The ncftp distribution comes with the  useful  utility  pro-
     grams  ncftpget(1) and ncftpput(1) which were designed to do
     command-line FTP.  In particular, they are  very  handy  for
     shell  scripts.   This  version of ncftp no longer does com-
     mand-line FTP, since the main ncftp program  is  more  of  a
     browser-type program.

  OPTIONS
     The program allows you to specify a host or directory URL on
     the command line.  This is a synonym for running  ncftp  and
     then  using  the open command.  A few command-line flags are
     allowed with this mode:

     -u XX   Use username XX instead of anonymous.

     -p XX   Use password XX with the username.

     -j XX   Use account XX in supplement  to  the  username  and
             password (deprecated).

     -P XX   Use  port  number XX instead of the default FTP ser-
             vice port (21).





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  INTRODUCTION TO THE COMMAND SHELL
     Upon running the program you are presented a command  prompt
     where you type commands to the program's shell.  Usually you
     will want to open a remote filesystem to transfer  files  to
     and  from  your local machine's filesystem.  To do that, you
     need to know the symbolic name of the remote system, or  its
     Internet  Protocol  (IP)  address.   For example, a symbolic
     name might be ``typhoon.unl.edu,'' and its IP address  could
     be  ``129.93.33.24.''   To open a connection to that system,
     you use the program's open command:

          open typhoon.unl.edu
          open 129.93.33.24

     Both of these try to open the machine called typhoon at  the
     University of Nebraska.  Using the symbolic name is the pre-
     ferred way, because IP addresses may change without  notice,
     while the symbolic names usually stay the same.

     When  you open a remote filesystem, you need to have permis-
     sion.  The FTP Protocol's authentication system is very sim-
     ilar  to  that  of  logging in to your account.  You have to
     give an account name, and its password for  access  to  that
     account's  files.   However,  most  remote systems that have
     anything you might be interested in don't require an account
     name  for  use.   You  can  often  get anonymous access to a
     remote filesystem and exchange files  that  have  been  made
     publicly  accessible.  The program attempts to get anonymous
     permission to a remote system  by  default.   What  actually
     happens  is  that  the program tries to use ``anonymous'' as
     the account name, and when prompted  for  a  password,  uses
     your  E-mail  address  as  a courtesy to the remote system's
     maintainer.  You can have the program try to use a  specific
     account also.  That will be explained later.

     After  the open command completes successfully, you are con-
     nected to the remote system and logged in.  You  should  now
     see  the  command  prompt  change to reflect the name of the
     current remote directory.  To  see  what's  in  the  current
     remote  directory, you can use the program's ls and dir com-
     mands.  The former is terse, preferring more remote files in
     less  screen  space,  and the latter is more verbose, giving
     detailed information about each item in the directory.

     You can use the program's cd command to move to other direc-
     tories  on  the  remote system.  The cd command behaves very
     much like the command of the same name  in  the  Bourne  and
     Korn shell.

     The  purpose  of  the program is to exchange data with other
     systems.  You can use the program's get command  to  copy  a
     file from the remote system to your local system:



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          get README.txt

     The program will display the progress of the transfer on the
     screen, so you can tell how much needs to be done before the
     transfer  finishes.  When the transfer does finish, then you
     can enter more commands to the program's command shell.

     You can use the program's put command to copy  a  file  from
     your system to the remote system:

          put something.tar

     When  you are finished using the remote system, you can open
     another one or use the quit

     Before quitting, you may want to save the current  FTP  ses-
     sion's settings for later.  You can use the bookmark command
     to save an  entry  into  your  $HOME/.ncftp/bookmarks  file.
     When  you use the bookmark command, you also specify a book-
     mark name, so the next time  instead  of  opening  the  full
     hostname  you  can use the name of the bookmark.  A bookmark
     acts just like one for your web browser,  so  it  saves  the
     remote  directory  you  were  in, the account name you used,
     etc., and other information it learned so that the next time
     you use the bookmark it should require as little effort from
     you as possible.

  COMMAND REFERENCE
     help The first command to know is help.  If you just type


               help

          from the command shell, the program prints the names of
          all of the supported commands.  From there, you can get
          specific help for  a  command  by  typing  the  command
          after, for example:


               help open

          prints information about the open command.

     ascii
          This  command  sets  the  transfer  type to ASCII text.
          This is useful for text-only transfers because the con-
          cept  of  text files differs between operating systems.
          For example on UNIX, a text file  denotes  line  breaks
          with  the  linefeed  character,  while on MS-DOS a line
          break is denoted by both a  carriage  return  character
          and  a line feed character.  Therefore, for data trans-
          fers that you consider the data as  text  you  can  use



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          ascii  to  ensure that both the remote system and local
          system translate  accordingly.   The  default  transfer
          type that ncftp uses is not ASCII, but straight binary.

     bgget and bgput
          These commands correspond to the get and  put  commands
          explained  below,  except  that  they do the job in the
          background.  Normally when you do a get then  the  pro-
          gram does the download immediately, and does not return
          control to you until the download completes.  The back-
          ground  transfers  are  nice  because  you can continue
          browsing the remote filesystem and even open other sys-
          tems.   In  fact, they are done by a daemon process, so
          even if you log off your UNIX host  the  daemon  should
          still do your transfers.  The daemon will also automat-
          ically continue to retry the transfers until they  fin-
          ish.   To  tell when background jobs have finished, you
          have to examine the $HOME/.ncftp/spool/log file, or run
          the jobs command from within NcFTP.

          Both the bgget and bgput commands allow you to schedule
          when to do the transfers.  They take a  ``-@''  parame-
          ter,  whose  argument is a date of the form YYYYMMDDhh-
          mmss (four digit year, month, day, hour,  minute,  sec-
          ond).   For  example, to schedule a download at 3 AM on
          November 6, you could try:


               bgget -@ 19971106030000 /pub/idstuff/quake/q2_100.zip

     bgstart
          This command tells ncftp to immediately start the back-
          ground  transfers you've requested, which simply runs a
          copy of the ncftpbatch program which is responsible for
          the  background  jobs.  Normally the program will start
          the background job as soon as  you  close  the  current
          site, open a new site, or quit the program.  The reason
          for this is because since so many users still use  slow
          dialup  links  that  starting  the transfers would slow
          things to a crawl, making it difficult  to  browse  the
          remote  system.   An  added bonus of starting the back-
          ground job when you close the site is  that  ncftp  can
          pass  off  that  open connection to the ncftpbatch pro-
          gram.  That is nice when the site is  always  busy,  so
          that  the  background  job doesn't have to wait and get
          re-logged on to do its job.

     binary
          Sets the transfer type to raw binary, so that no trans-
          lation  is  done  on the data transferred.  This is the
          default anyway, since most files are in binary.




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User Commands                                            ncftp(1)



     bookmark
          Saves the current session settings for later use.  This
          is  useful to save the remote system and remote working
          directory so you can quickly resume where you left  off
          some  other  time.  The bookmark data is stored in your
          $HOME/.ncftp/bookmarks file.

     bookmarks
          Lists the contents of your $HOME/.ncftp/bookmarks  file
          in  a  human-readable format.  You can use this command
          to recall the bookmark name of a previously saved book-
          mark, so that you can use the open command with it.

     cat  Acts  like  the  ``/bin/cat''  UNIX  command,  only for
          remote files.  This downloads the file you specify  and
          dumps  it  directly  to  the screen.  You will probably
          find the page command more useful, since that lets  you
          view  the file one screen at a time instead of printing
          the entire file at once.

     cd   Changes the working directory on the remote host.   Use
          this  command  to move to different areas on the remote
          server.  If you just opened a new site, you might be in
          the  root  directory.   Perhaps  there  was a directory
          called ``/pub/news/comp.sources.d'' that  someone  told
          you about.  From the root directory, you could:


               cd pub
               cd news
               cd comp.sources.d

          or, more concisely,


               cd /pub/news/comp.sources.d

          Then,  commands  such as get, put, and ls could be used
          to refer to items in that directory.

          Some shells in the UNIX environment have  a  feature  I
          like,  which  is  switching  to the previous directory.
          Like those shells, you can do:


               cd -

          to change to the last directory you were in.

     chmod
          Acts like the ``/bin/chmod''  UNIX  command,  only  for
          remote files.  However, this is not a standard command,



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          so remote FTP servers may not support it.

     close
          Disconnects you from the remote  server.   The  program
          does this for you automatically when needed, so you can
          simply open other sites or  quit  the  program  without
          worrying about closing the connection by hand.

     debug
          This command is mostly for internal testing.  You could
          type


               debug 1

          to turn debugging mode on.  Then you could see all mes-
          sages  between  the  program and the remote server, and
          things that are only printed in debugging  mode.   How-
          ever,   this  information  is  also  available  in  the
          $HOME/.ncftp/trace file, which is created each time you
          run  ncftp.   If you need to report a bug, send a trace
          file if you can.

     dir  Prints a  detailed  directory  listing.   It  tries  to
          behave  like  UNIX's  ``/bin/ls  -l''  command.  If the
          remote server seems to be a UNIX host, you can also use
          the same flags you would with ls, for instance


               dir -rt

          would try to act like


               /bin/ls -lrt

          would on UNIX.

     edit Downloads  into  a  temporary  file  for editing on the
          local host, then uploads the changed file back  to  the
          remote host.

     get  Copies  files from the current working directory on the
          remote host to your machine's  current  working  direc-
          tory.  To place a copy of ``README'' and ``README.too''
          in your local directory, you could try:


               get README README.too

          You could also accomplish  that  by  using  a  wildcard
          expression, such as:



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User Commands                                            ncftp(1)




               get README*

          This  command  is  similar to the behavior of other FTP
          programs' mget command.  To retrieve a remote file  but
          give  it a different name on your host, you can use the
          ``-z'' flag.  This example shows how to download a file
          called ReadMe.txt but name it locally as README:


               get -z ReadMe.txt README

          The  program  tries to ``resume'' downloads by default.
          This means that if the remote FTP server lost the  con-
          nection  and  was  only able to send 490 kilobytes of a
          500 kilobyte file,  you  could  reconnect  to  the  FTP
          server  and do another get on the same file name and it
          would get the last 10 kilobytes, instead of  retrieving
          the  entire file again.  There are some occasions where
          you may not want that behavior.  To turn it off you can
          use the ``-f'' flag.

          There  are  also  times  where you want to append to an
          existing file.  You can do this  by  using  the  ``-A''
          flag, for example


               get -A log.11

          would  append  to a file named ``log.11'' if it existed
          locally.

          Another thing you can do is delete a remote file  after
          you download it.  This can be useful when a remote host
          expects  a  file  to  be  removed  when  it  has   been
          retrieved.   Use the double-D flag, such as ``get -DD''
          to do this.

          The get command  lets  you  retrieve  entire  directory
          trees,  too.  Although it may not work with some remote
          systems, you can try ``get -R''  with  a  directory  to
          download the directory and its contents.

          When using the ``-R'' flag, you can also use the ``-T''
          flag to disable automatic on-the-fly TAR mode for down-
          loading  whole  directory  trees.  The program uses TAR
          whenever possible since this usually preserves symbolic
          links and file permissions. TAR mode can also result in
          faster transfers for directories containing many  small
          files,  since  a  single  data  connection  can be used
          rather than an FTP data connection for each small file.
          The downside to using TAR is that it forces downloading



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          of the whole directory,  even  if  you  had  previously
          downloaded  a portion of it earlier, so you may want to
          use this option if you want to resume downloading of  a
          directory.

     jobs Views  the list of currently executing NcFTP background
          tasks.  This actually just runs ncftpbatch -l for  you.

     lcd  The  lcd  command  is the first of a few ``l'' commands
          that work with the local host.  This changes  the  cur-
          rent  working directory on the local host.  If you want
          to download files into a different local directory, you
          could  use  lcd to change to that directory and then do
          your downloads.

     lchmod
          Runs ``/bin/chmod'' on the local host.

     lls  Another local command that comes in handy  is  the  lls
          command,  which  runs ``/bin/ls'' on the local host and
          displays the results in the program's window.  You  can
          use  the  same flags with lls as you would in your com-
          mand shell, so you can do things like:


               lcd ~/doc
               lls -lrt p*.txt

     lmkdir
          Runs ``/bin/mkdir'' on the local host.

     lookup
          The program also has a built-in interface to  the  name
          service  via  the  lookup  command.  This means you can
          lookup entries for remote hosts, like:


               lookup cse.unl.edu ftp.cs.unl.edu sphygmomanometer.unl.edu

          prints:


               cse.unl.edu               129.93.33.1
               typhoon.unl.edu           129.93.33.24
               sphygmomanometer.unl.edu  129.93.33.126

          There is also a  more  detailed  option,  enabled  with
          ``-v,'' i.e.:


               lookup -v cse.unl.edu ftp.cs.unl.edu




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          prints:


               cse.unl.edu:
                   Name:     cse.unl.edu
                   Address:  129.93.33.1

               ftp.cs.unl.edu:
                   Name:     typhoon.unl.edu
                   Alias:    ftp.cs.unl.edu
                   Address:  129.93.33.24

          You can also give IP addresses, so this would work too:


               lookup 129.93.33.24

          prints:


               typhoon.unl.edu           129.93.33.24

     lpage
          Views a local file one page at a time, with  your  pre-
          ferred $PAGER program.

     lpwd Prints  the  current local directory.  Use this command
          when you forget where you are on your local machine.

     lrename
          Runs ``/bin/mv'' on the local host.

     lrm  Runs ``/bin/rm'' on the local host.

     lrmdir
          Runs ``/bin/rmdir'' on the local host.

     ls   Prints a directory listing from the remote system.   It
          tries  to  behave  like UNIX's ``/bin/ls -CF'' command.
          If the remote server seems to be a UNIX host,  you  can
          also use the same flags you would with ls, for instance


               ls -rt

          would try to act like


               /bin/ls -CFrt

          would on UNIX.




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          ncftp has a powerful built-in system for  dealing  with
          directory  listings.  It tries to cache each one, so if
          you list the same directory, odds are it  will  display
          instantly.   Behind  the  scenes,  ncftp always tries a
          long listing, and then reformats it as it needs to.  So
          even if your first listing of a directory was a regular
          ``ls'' which displayed the files in columns, your  next
          listing  could be ``ls -lrt'' and ncftp would still use
          the cached directory listing  to  quickly  display  the
          information for you!

     mkdir
          Creates  a  new directory on the remote host.  For many
          public archives, you won't have the proper access  per-
          missions to do that.

     open Establishes an FTP control connection to a remote host.
          By default, ncftp logs in  anonymously  to  the  remote
          host.  You may want to use a specific user account when
          you log in, so you can use the ``-u'' flag  to  specify
          which  user.   This  example shows how to open the host
          ``bowser.nintendo.co.jp'' using the username ``mario:''


               open -u mario bowser.nintendo.co.jp

          Here  is  a  list of options available for use with the
          open command:

          -u XX Use username XX instead of anonymous.

          -p XX Use password XX with the username.

          -j XX Use account XX in supplement to the username  and
          password (deprecated).

          -P  XX  Use  port  number XX instead of the default FTP
          service port (21).

     page Browses a remote file one page at a  time,  using  your
          $PAGER program.  This is useful for reading README's on
          the remote host without downloading them first.

     pdir and pls
          These commands are equivalent to  dir  and  ls  respec-
          tively,  only  they  feed  their  output to your pager.
          These commands are  useful  if  the  directory  listing
          scrolls off your screen.

     put  Copies   files  from  the  local  host  to  the  remote
          machine's current working directory.  To place  a  copy
          of  ``xx.zip''  and ``yy.zip'' in the remote directory,



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          you could try:


               put xx.zip yy.zip

          You could also accomplish  that  by  using  a  wildcard
          expression, such as:


               put *.zip

          This  command  is  similar to the behavior of other FTP
          programs' mput command.  To send a remote file but give
          it  a  different  name  on  your  host, you can use the
          ``-z'' flag.  This example shows how to upload  a  file
          called  ``ncftpd-2.0.6.tar.gz'' but name it remotely as
          ``NFTPD206.TGZ:''


               put -z ncftpd-2.0.6.tar.gz NFTPD206.TGZ

          The program does  not  try  to  ``resume''  uploads  by
          default.   If  you do want to resume an upload, use the
          ``-z'' flag.

          There are also times where you want  to  append  to  an
          existing  remote  file.   You  can do this by using the
          ``-A'' flag, for example


               put -A log11.txt

          would append  to  a  file  named  ``log11.txt''  if  it
          existed on the remote server.

          Another  thing  you can do is delete a local file after
          you  upload  it.   Use  the  double-D  flag,  such   as
          ``put -DD'' to do this.

          The  put  command lets you send entire directory trees,
          too.  It should work on all remote systems, so you  can
          try ``put -R'' with a directory to upload the directory
          and its contents.

     pwd  Prints the current remote working directory.  A portion
          of  the  pathname  is  also  displayed  in  the shell's
          prompt.

     quit Of course, when you finish using the program, type quit
          to  end  the  program (You could also use bye, exit, or
          ^D).




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     quote
          This can be used to send a direct FTP Protocol  command
          to  the remote server.  Generally this isn't too useful
          to the average user.

     rename
          If you need to change the name of a  remote  file,  you
          can use the rename command, like:


               rename SPHYGMTR.TAR sphygmomanometer-2.3.1.tar

     rhelp
          Sends a help request to the remote server.  The list of
          FTP Protocol commands is often printed,  and  sometimes
          some  other  information  that is actually useful, like
          how to reach the site administrator.

          Depending on the remote server, you may be able to give
          a parameter to the server also, like:


               rhelp NLST

          One server responded:


               Syntax: NLST [ <sp> path-name ]

     rm   If  you need to delete a remote file you can try the rm
          command.  Much of the time this won't work because  you
          won't have the proper access permissions.  This command
          doesn't accept any flags, so you  can't  nuke  a  whole
          tree by using ``-rf'' flags like you can on UNIX.

     rmdir
          Similarly,  the  rmdir  command  removes  a  directory.
          Depending on the remote server,  you  may  be  able  to
          remove a non-empty directory, so be careful.

     set  This  lets  you configure some program variables, which
          are saved between runs in the $HOME/.ncftp/prefs  file.
          The basic syntax is:


               set <option> <value>

          For example, to change the value you use for the anony-
          mous password, you might do:


               set anon-password devnull@example.com



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          See the next section for a list of things you change.

     show This lets you display program variables.   You  can  do
          ``show all'' to display all of them, or give a variable
          name to just display that one, such as:


               show anon-password

     site One obscure command you may  have  to  use  someday  is
          site.   The  FTP  Protocol allows for ``site specific''
          commands.  These ``site'' commands vary of course, such
          as:


               site chmod 644 README

          Actually,  ncftp's chmod command really does the above.

          Try doing one of these to see what  the  remote  server
          supports, if any:


               rhelp SITE
               site help

     type You may need to change transfer types during the course
          of a session with a server.  You can use the type  com-
          mand to do this.  Try one of these:


               type ascii
               type binary
               type image

          The  ascii command is equivalent to ``type a'', and the
          binary  command  is  equivalent   to   ``type i''   and
          ``type b''.

     umask
          Sets the process' umask on the remote server, if it has
          any concept of a umask, i.e.:


               umask 077

          However, this is not a standard command, so remote  FTP
          servers may not support it.

     version
          This  command dumps some information about the particu-
          lar edition of the program you are using,  and  how  it



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          was installed on your system.

  VARIABLE REFERENCE
     anon-password
          Specifies  what to use for the password when logging in
          anonymously.  Internet convention has been to use  your
          E-mail address as a courtesy to the site administrator.
          If you change this, be aware that  some  sites  require
          (i.e. they check for) valid E-mail addresses.

     auto-resume
          NcFTP 3 now prompts the user by default when you try to
          download a file that already exists locally, or  upload
          a file that already exists remotely.  Older versions of
          the program automatically guessed whether to  overwrite
          the  existing  file  or attempt to resume where it left
          off, but sometimes the program would guess  wrong.   If
          you  would  prefer  that the program always guess which
          action to take, set this variable  to  yes,  otherwise,
          leave  it set to no and the program will prompt you for
          which action to take.

     autosave-bookmark-changes
          With the advent of version  3  of  NcFTP,  the  program
          treats  bookmarks  more  like  they would with your web
          browser, which means that once you bookmark  the  site,
          the  remote directory is static.  If you set this vari-
          able to yes, then the program will automatically update
          the  bookmark's  starting  remote  directory  with  the
          directory you were in when you closed the  site.   This
          behavior would be more like that of NcFTP version 2.

     confirm-close
          By  default  the  program  will ask you when a site you
          haven't bookmarked is about to be closed.  To turn this
          prompt off, you can set this variable to no.

     connect-timeout
          Previous  versions of the program used a single timeout
          value for everything.  You can now have different  val-
          ues for different operations.  However, you probably do
          not need to change these from the defaults  unless  you
          have special requirements.

          The connect-timeout variable controls how long to wait,
          in seconds, for a connection establishment to  complete
          before  considering it hopeless.  You can choose to not
          use a timeout at all by setting this to -1.

     control-timeout
          This is the timer used when ncftp sends an FTP  command
          over  the  control connection to the remote server.  If



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          the server hasn't replied in that many seconds, it con-
          siders the session lost.

     logsize
          This   is   controls   how   large   the  transfer  log
          ($HOME/.ncftp/log) can  grow  to,  in  kilobytes.   The
          default is 200, for 200kB; if you don't want a log, set
          this to 0.

     pager
          This is the external program to  use  to  view  a  text
          file, and is more by default.

     passive
          This  controls  ncftp's  behavior for data connections,
          and can be set to one  of  on,  off,  or  the  default,
          optional.   When passive mode is on, ncftp uses the FTP
          command primitive PASV to  have  the  client  establish
          data connections to the server.  The default FTP proto-
          col behavior is to use the FTP command  primitive  PORT
          which  has the server establish data connections to the
          client.   The  default  setting  for   this   variable,
          optional,  allows  ncftp  to choose whichever method it
          deems necessary.

     progress-meter
          You can change how the program  reports  file  transfer
          status.  Select from meter 2, 1, or 0.

     redial-delay
          When  a  host is busy or unavailable, the program waits
          this number of seconds before trying again.  The small-
          est you can set this is to 10 seconds -- so if you were
          planning on being inconsiderate, think again.

     save-passwords
          If you set this variable to yes, the program will  save
          passwords  along  with  the  bookmarks you save.  While
          this makes non-anonymous logins more  convenient,  this
          can be very dangerous since your account information is
          now sitting in the  $HOME/.ncftp/bookmarks  file.   The
          passwords aren't in clear text, but it is still trivial
          to decode them  if  someone  wants  to  make  a  modest
          effort.

     so-bufsize
          If  your  operating  system supports TCP Large Windows,
          you can try setting this  variable  to  the  number  of
          bytes  to set the TCP/IP socket buffer to.  This option
          won't be of much use unless the remote server also sup-
          ports  large  window  sizes  and is pre-configured with
          them enabled.



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     xfer-timeout
          This timer controls how long to wait for data blocks to
          complete.   Don't  set this too low or else your trans-
          fers will timeout without completing.

  FIREWALL AND PROXY CONFIGURATION
     You may find that your network administrator  has  placed  a
     firewall between your machine and the Internet, and that you
     cannot reach external hosts.

     The answer may be as simple as setting ncftp to use  passive
     mode only, which you can do from a ncftp command prompt like
     this:

          set passive on

     The reason for this is because many firewalls do  not  allow
     incoming  connections  to  the  site,  but do allow users to
     establish outgoing connections.  A passive  data  connection
     is  established  by  the  client  to the server, whereas the
     default is for the server to establish the connection to the
     client,  which  firewalls may object to.  Of course, you now
     may have problems with sites whose primitive FTP servers  do
     not support passive mode.

     Otherwise,  if  you  know you need to have ncftp communicate
     directly with a firewall or proxy, you can try  editing  the
     separate  $HOME/.ncftp/firewall  configuration  file.   This
     file is created automatically the first  time  you  run  the
     program,  and  contains  all the information you need to get
     the program to work in this setup.

     The basics  of  this  process  are  configuring  a  firewall
     (proxy)  host to go through, a user account and password for
     authentication on the firewall, and which type  of  firewall
     method  to  use.   You  can also setup an exclusion list, so
     that ncftp does not use the firewall for hosts on the  local
     network.

FILES
     $HOME/.ncftp/bookmarks
          Saves bookmark and host information.

     $HOME/.ncftp/firewall
          Firewall access configuration file.

     $HOME/.ncftp/prefs
          Program preferences.

     $HOME/.ncftp/trace
          Debugging output for entire program run.




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     $HOME/.ncftp/v3init
          Used  to  tell  if  this version of the program has run
          before.

     $HOME/.ncftp/spool/
          Directory where background jobs are stored in the  form
          of spool configuration files.

     $HOME/.ncftp/spool/log
          Information for background data transfer processes.

ENVIRONMENT
     PATH User's  search  path,  used to find the ncftpbatch pro-
          gram, pager, and some other system utilities.

     PAGER
          Program to use to view text files one page at a time.

     TERM If the program was compiled with support for GNU  Read-
          line  it will need to know how to manipulate the termi-
          nal correctly for line-editing, etc.  The pager program
          will also take advantage of this setting.

     HOME By  default,  the program writes its configuration data
          in a .ncftp subdirectory of the HOME directory.

     NCFTPDIR
          If set, the program will use this directory instead  of
          $HOME/.ncftp.   This  variable  is  optional except for
          those users whose home directory is the root directory.

     COLUMNS
          Both  the  built-in ls command and the external ls com-
          mand need this to determine how many screen columns the
          terminal has.

BUGS
     There  are  no  such  sites  named  bowser.nintendo.co.jp or
     sphygmomanometer.unl.edu.

     Auto-resume should check  the  file  timestamps  instead  of
     relying  upon just the file sizes, but it is difficult to do
     this reliably within FTP.

     Directory  caching  and  recursive   downloads   depend   on
     UNIX-like behavior of the remote host.

AUTHOR
     Mike Gleason, NcFTP Software (http://www.ncftp.com).






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ATTRIBUTES
     See   attributes(5)   for   descriptions  of  the  following
     attributes:

     +---------------+-------------------+
     |ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE   |
     +---------------+-------------------+
     |Availability   | network/ftp/ncftp |
     +---------------+-------------------+
     |Stability      | Volatile          |
     +---------------+-------------------+
SEE ALSO
     ncftpput(1),  ncftpget(1),  ncftpbatch(1),  ftp(1),  rcp(1),
     tftp(1).

     LibNcFTP (http://www.ncftp.com/libncftp).

     NcFTPd (http://www.ncftp.com/ncftpd).

THANKS
     Thanks  to  everyone  who uses the program.  Your support is
     what drives me to improve the program!

     I thank Dale Botkin and Tim Russell at my former ISP,  Probe
     Technology.

     Ideas and some code contributed by my partner, Phil Dietz.

     Thanks  to  Brad Mittelstedt and Chris Tjon, for driving and
     refining the development of the backbone  of  this  project,
     LibNcFTP.

     I'd  like  to  thank  my  former system administrators, most
     notably Charles Daniel, for making testing on a  variety  of
     platforms  possible,  letting me have some extra disk space,
     and for maintaining the UNL FTP site.

     For testing versions 1 and 2 above and beyond  the  call  of
     duty,  I am especially grateful to: Phil Dietz, Kok Hon Yin,
     and Andrey A. Chernov (ache@astral.msk.su).

     Thanks to  Tim  MacKenzie  (t.mackenzie@trl.oz.au)  for  the
     original  filename  completion  code  for  version 2.3.0 and
     2.4.2.

     Thanks to DaviD W. Sanderson (dws@ora.com), for  helping  me
     out with the man page.

     Thanks to those of you at UNL who appreciate my work.

     Thanks  to Red Hat Software for honoring my licensing agree-
     ment, but more importantly, thanks for providing a solid and



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     affordable development platform.

APOLOGIES
     To  the  users,  for not being able to respond personally to
     most of your inquiries.

     To Phil, for things not being the way they should be.



NOTES
     This  software  was   built   from   source   available   at
     https://java.net/projects/solaris-userland.    The  original
     community       source       was       downloaded       from
     ftp://ftp.ncftp.com/ncftp/older_ver-
     sions/ncftp-3.2.3-src.tar.bz2

     Further information about this software can be found on  the
     open        source        community        website        at
     http://www.ncftp.com/ncftp/.



































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