How to use rsync over FTP

Question

Debian 4 Linux

I have the following cmd line which works fine.

rsync -avr -e ssh /home/dir user@example.com:/home/

But I need to set it up now to rsync to a remote server that only has an FTP server on it. How do I go about that?

I looked at the rsync help but quickly got lost (I don't do this stuff very often).

Answer 1

You don't. rsync can't do that for you, it is a protocol of its own and doesn't work over FTP.

You might, however, want to try csync. IIRC it provides rsync-like behaviour over HTTP. I can't comment on whether it works over FTP, you'll have to try it.

Answer 2

Rsync definitely isn't going to work for you for the reasons others have mentioned.

However, lftp and ncftp both have "mirror" modes that will probably meet your needs.

I use this to push stuff from my local directory to a ftp or sftp web host:

lftp -c "set ftp:list-options -a;
open ftp://user:password@your.ftp.com; 
lcd ./web;
cd /web/public_html;
mirror --reverse --delete --use-cache --verbose --allow-chown  
--allow-suid --no-umask --parallel=2 --exclude-glob .svn"

Answer 3

As written by esel

lftp is very good tool.

I suggest you to parametrize the script, and make use of the

exclude-glob

options, that excludes filenames using the glob feature (*,? ..) of your shell:

#!/bin/bash    
HOST="your.ftp.host.dom"
USER="username"
PASS="password"
LCD="/path/of/your/local/dir"
RCD="/path/of/your/remote/dir"
lftp -c "set ftp:list-options -a;
open ftp://$USER:$PASS@$HOST; 
lcd $LCD;
cd $RCD;
mirror --reverse \
       --delete \
       --verbose \
       --exclude-glob a-dir-to-exclude/ \
       --exclude-glob a-file-to-exclude \
       --exclude-glob a-file-group-to-exclude* \
       --exclude-glob other-files-to-esclude"

My 2c ..

Answer 4

rsync does not work over ftp. On the remote side it needs either the rsync daemon or a shell that it can call rsync from. Ftp generally allows you to call a few commands and rsync is not one of them. There are other tools meant for automating ftp tasks like "lftp".

Answer 5

This seems like a good and free fit: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ftpsync/

Answer 6

There is weex...

Weex is an utility designed to automate the task of remotely maintaining a web page or other FTP archive. It will synchronize a set of local files to a remote server by performing uploads and remote deletes as required.

Answer 7

Depending of what you're actually trying to do, another completely different approach could be use curlftps to mount a ftp folder, and then maybe rsync the two "local" folders.

The installation is different depending on your distro so I can't generalize on that, but you need to installfuse and curlftpfs (prolly Debian already has fuse install by default), then:

1. sudo apt-get install curlftpfs

2. Make sure the fuse module is loaded (modprobe fuse)

3. sudo curlftpfs ftp.yourserver.com /path/to/ftp/folder/ -o user=username:password,allow_other

Note that there's no space after the last comma (it's not a typo!). If you're satisfied with that or don't want to make that every time, you can add it to your fstab (usually in /etc/fstab):

curlftpfs#user:password@ftp.yourserver.com /path/to/ftp/folder/ fuse auto,user,uid=1000,allow_other 0 0

In that case, you have to make sure the fuse module is loaded before.

Be advised though, of two things:

• That the developer dropped the project one or two years ago, so I don't know how usable/stable for the time being.
• If the password contains a weird character curlftpfs could fail (maybe you can do something with the .netrc).

Answer 8

Jonas S's solution can be useful depending on the circumstance, for example if you have a high download speed and slow upload, checking the files on the server might be relatively faster than uploading files unnecessarily.

You probably want to use CurlFTPFS, though: http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?suite=default&section=all&arch=any&searchon=names&keywords=curlftpfs

Although, generally, it is better to use a regular FTP client altogether instead of rsync.

Answer 9

I don't believe you will be able to do this, the server you are trying to Rsync to will only have an FTP server running, it will not understand the commands that Rsync is sending it.

If the reason you want to do this is that you only have access to port 21, but you have control of the server, you can change the port Rsync listens on, on the server, but this is obviously only useful if you don't want to use FTP on that port.

Answer 10

For what it appears you are trying to do, you could also use wget.

wget -m ftp://username:password@domain.com

Answer 11

Using “sitecopy” or “mirror” can save you lots of bandwidth.

They both handle efficient incremental update.

Answer 12

If you want to automate the task then use lftp as you can create a script as some people have posted above, you can script it all really easily to your liking, if your looking for a one time solution (i.e. you need download an entire website via ftp / move it to another server) use ncftp, its simple, install it if its not already installed:

apt-get install ncftp

or

yum install ncftp

(sorry non debian/red hat based distros..)

once installed, open ncftp in the terminal then type:

open -u ftpusername ftp.thedomain.com

It'll ask you for the password, enter it, and then:

get -R /home/remotewebsite/public_html/ /home/localwebsite/public_html/

It'll do the rest pf the work for you.. good luck

Answer 13

EDITED: thx to comment below by outis, I stand corrected on my previous statement. There is no solution to FTP+rsync that I'm aware of then.

Answer 14

Install sftp and then you can use rsync.

I use the following one.

rsync --delete --times --recursive --perms --owner --group --verbose --progress --stats -e ssh root@192.168.0.100:/folder1/ /folder2/