FTP client

[Scott Kitterman]

On Thu, 28 Sep 2006 18:10:47 +0200 "Raphaël Pinson" <raphink at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>On 9/28/06, Derek Broughton <news at pointerstop.ca> wrote:
>>
>> James Tappin wrote:
>>
>> > On Thu, 28 Sep 2006 14:58:32 +0200
>> > Orjan Sinclair <o.sinclair at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > OS> Anyone willing to recommend a KDE ftp-client (graphical)?
>> > OS>
>> > OS> Sinclair
>> > OS>
>> >
>> > Konqueror -- just enter an ftp://..... url (ftp://user@.... for
>> > non-anonymous[*] ftp), and drag files to the desired local dir -- the
>> > only gotcha is if for non-anonymous ftp the machine at the other end is
>> > a VMS box (at least last time I tried) it couldn't hand VMS paths.
>>
>> Or fish:// for secure file transfer.
>
>
>Fish is not ftp. It starts a distant session via ssh on the machine. It is
>not useful for file transfer only, because sftp (secure ftp) uses ssh
>aswell, but is faster since it doesn't start a whole ssh session on the
>distant machine.
>
It is generally better to use SFTP than Fish or FTP if you can.  SFTP works on Ubuntu servers if you install SSH.

FTP sends passwords in the clear.

Fish drops a little PERL script on the distant end to aacomplish file transfers.  It will try to transfer files in parallel rather than in series when transferring multiple files.  This can be very inefficient.  It also creates a fork for each file. Before I understood all this I once DOSed myself by inadvertently created a fork bomb by trying to copy a big maildir folder.

Konq is very good for all these, but use SFTP if you can.

Scott K