Thread: LFTP - Fast ftp client for Linux and MAC

Lftp has become my favourite ftp client for pulling files from my seedbox. It's lightweight, doesn't eat up all your system resources, allows for segmented downloading of files and downloads can be resumed if paused or your connection falls out half way through. It also allows for sftp connections and TAB completion which is handy for not having to type out filenames in full.

Lftp is a Command Line Interface (CLI) ftp client. Those dreaded words usually seem to scare most people away from using a program in favour of something with a flashy GUI. However I think it is always worth learning how to use CLI based programs and hopefully this guide should help some of you give it a go and see just how useful the CLI can be.

I will cover the installation of lftp on the main debian based linux distros such as ubuntu et al. seeing as they seem to be the most widely used. I will also cover the installation on Arch linux (my personal favourite at the moment) and installing on any other linux distro from the lftp source. I will not be covering any Red Hat based linux distributions as I personally cannot stand the rpm package management systems. However if there is a demand for such a section to this guide I could add it at a later date.

I will also provide a link on how to install this wonderful little program on your mac.

Installation

Linux

Ubuntu (or anything else debian/ubuntu based)
The installation on ubuntu is very straight forward. Fire up synaptic and search for lftp, install it and all its dependencies.

Or alternatively if you like to use the command line to install your programs

Code:

sudo apt-get install lftp

Arch Linux

First update your package list and system if you do not already do so on a regular basis

Code:

$pacman -Syy

Code:

$pacman -Syu

Then install lftp from the arch repo

Code:

$ pacman -S lftp

That should be it.

From Source

Download the tarball from the lftp website

Code:

$ wget http://ftp.yars.free.net/pub/source/lftp/lftp-4.1.3.tar.gz

Unpack the tarball

Code:

$ tar -zxvf lftp-4.1.3.tar.gz

Change into the newly extracted directory

Code:

$cd lftp-4.1.3

Configure and install the package

Code:

$ ./configure

Code:

$ make

Code:

$ sudo make install

* if you do not have sudo on your system then issue the su command to gain super user permissions, then issue the make install command.

MAC

To install lftp on MAC you must first install mac ports or darwin ports.

The best way of installing these is to head over to their websites and follow their installation instructions for your version of OSX. (macports requires you to install Xcode first)

The installation of lftp can be done by following the guide on this website

Lftp version 4.0.2 - How to Download and Install on Mac OS X

which uses darwinports, but the installation process should be the same if using macports.

Lftp Usage

First of all we need to open up a terminal program or whatever your preferred way of getting to the CLI is.



Then we can connect to our seedbox with the following command

Code:

$ lftp -p port -u username,password ftp://site

(* port is usually 21 for normal ftp connections and 22 for sftp. If you are connecting via sftp, don't forget to change ftp:// to sftp://)

You can also leave out the password from the command and you will be asked for it upon connecting to your seedbox.

The following are some useful commands for navigating your seedbox

ls - will list the contents of your current directory
cd - will change the directory
rm file - will remove/delete a file
rmdir directory - will remove/delete a directory

Using the TAB key for autocompleting file or directory names is a very useful feature of lftp.

Lets say we are navigating to a folder where our target movie is stored. In my case on my seedbox my downloaded files are stored in a directory called data.

First we do

Code:

$ cd data

Followed by:

Code:

$ls

to list all the files.

For the purpose of this guide we will say we have 3 different folders displayed which each contain one film.

MovieAAABBBXXXYYY
MovieAAACCCXXXYYY
MovieAAADDDXXXYYY

As is the case with most torrented movies, the folder containing the movie has a long name with the year of the film, the ripper/encoder and other bits of information in it. To save us having to type out the whole name of the film we can use the tab key to auto-complete the file/folder name. We issue the change directory command and start typing the filename. In our example each filename has the first same three letters, so we type those and then the first unique identifying letter. So say we want to change into the MovieAAADDDXXXYYY directory. We type

Code:

cd MovieAAAD

Then hit the TAB key, which should auto-complete the directory name for us and display:

Code:

$ cd MovieAAADDDXXXYYY

Hit enter and we should be in the movies directory.

Again use the ls and cd commands to get to the movie file, lets say it's called Movie AAADDDXXXYYY.avi

Now we want to start a segmented download of 10 pieces of that file. To do this we use

Code:

$ pget -c -n 10 MovieAAADDDXXXYYY.avi

The -c command allows us to restart the download from the same place if there are any interruptions while downloading is taking place. The -n command indicates the number of pieces into which the download will be segmented. Which in this case is 10.

That should be it, your download should now commence in 10 segments which are joined together at the end of the download process.

If you are wanting to download multiple files then simply add each extra file you would like to download to the end of the pget command.

In the case where you have a folder which contains a movie which has already been split into multiple rar files, you would be better off using the mget command to download the directory containing the rar files.

For further commands and options check out the Man Pages for lftp here:

LFTP Man Pages

I hope that helps a few people out. If there is anything missing or better ways of doing stuff just let me know. I will try to update this little guide whenever I can.

Great post!

I linked it on my own about using lftp to mirror and sync with seedboxes in Tutorial: Auto Sync seedbox and home linux (and Mac!) machine with lftp shell script

Cheers!

(veiled bump for great justice) ;)

How do you download entire directories? and if possible multiple directories into one command?

cyberduck 4 mac is better than LFTP

As of yet Cyberduck does not support mult-part or segmented downloads. As far as I am aware this is supposed to be incorporated into release 4.3, but seeing as we are not there yet LFTP is still my method of choice for downloading files from the seedbox at speeds which do not suck. Granted cyberduck is a great bit of software and if you aren't able to get to grips with using a command line interface then the GUI of cyberduck is easy to get along with.

LFTP is definitely an awesome client, and this was a very good post on how to configure it/utilize it's resources so definitely going to throw ya soem rep for that, way to go! I on the other hand, prefer FileZilla as it is a good stable and strong multithreaded client. I'm glad so see someone taking the time to post some good tutorials and help for *nix/OSX users :)

Is there a way to change where lftp downloads the files to?

Originally Posted by kaiwenxedo92

Is there a way to change where lftp downloads the files to?

while "cd" is use to change your remote directory, you can use "lcd" to change local working directory.
for example :

Code:

lcd /home/yourusername/downloads

Best linux ftp client ever