File Transfer Protocol (FTP) was the standard method of sending and retrieving files over the Internet without the need to use an email attachment or a browser to open the file. It has been replaced by the Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) and the Secure Copy protocol (SCP) which encrypt your login and data, because old FTP operated insecurely (without encryption).
SFTP and SCP are particularly useful for transmitting or receiving large numbers of files (such as whole directory or a Web site) without having to click on each one individually.
This document explains how to use programs which run SFTP and/or SCP. It describes programs for the three most popular platforms: Microsoft Windows, Unix, and Apple Mac OS X. This document assumes you are completely familiar with using your computer and operating system, and that you know and understand files, folders (directories), Web sites, URIs, and usernames/passwords. If you are uncertain about any of these, please refer to the Training Centre pages for details of courses.
22 March 2009 (rev 4)
1. What you need before you start
You need to know the hostname (or numeric IP address) of the computer you want to download from or upload to.
The names of Internet computers are usually in the format machine.site.network, for example rtfm.mit.edu or www.ucc.ie. An IP address is four numbers separated by dots, eg 18.181.0.29. Note that some countries add a fourth, and sometimes even a fifth element to the name, eg juno.cs.soton.ac.uk.
You also need the names and folders (directories) of the files you want to get or send. If you are using a web-page editor to update your web site, it ought to know already what pages you have edited amd want to upload.
You need a valid username and password for the remote machine you want to send files to or get files from. If you are using SFTP or SCP for a web site upload, you will have been given your usename and password by the Webmaster.
Frequently-Asked Questions
Web browsers like Firefox (Mozilla), Internet Explorer, Netscape, Lynx, Opera, Konqueror, etc can only be used for old-style FTP file transfers, and they are restricted by their nature to handling one file per click: for a whole directory-full of files you have to get or send them one by one, which is very tedious. Standard FTP programs like FileZilla, gFTP, and FireFTP now all operate the secure methods, and can download or upload whole directories of files with a single click, which makes them much preferable for large-scale work like uploading Web sites or getting multiple files from a repository.
This is changing: some browsers can now upload directories, but they still can't do SFTP.
Web editor programs like HoTMetal and DreamWeaver all have SFTP uploading (‘publishing’) built in, and this can be used to manage a Web site very efficiently. However, as cautioned in the Site Owners' Guide, these routines are often very hard to set up, as they confuse the URI of a site (the public address that users go to) with the login name and directory that the site owner uses to upload files (the two are related but almost never identical). In these cases, a stand-alone SFTP program is much simpler and more reliable.
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, Electronic Publishing Unit • 2009-03-22 • (other) |
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