FTP upload
Roedy Green
somebody is downloading the entire run aborts. If there is a large
number of files to upload, or heavy web traffic it takes hours to
complete the task.
There are a zillion FTP upload programs out there, but every last one
I have looked at is bloody incompetent.
1. GUI only, no scripts
2. starts from scratch every time getting a list of all files on the
server.
3. won't recover from a file busy being downloaded.
4. no atomic update.
5. buggy
FTP itself is incompetent. It does not preserve timestamps properly.
It gets confused by DST. It gets confused by timezones.
I am having a look at rsync, a typical unix utility for nerds.
It appears to do the timestamps properly.
I have not yet answered the following questions:
If I try to upload a file to my server, while someone out on the web
is downloading it, it will be busy. Does rsync just abort? Does it
retry later? Using Netload, I often find it very difficult to complete
an upload because it aborts every time I upload a file somebody is
downloading.
Do I need bash on my Windows desktop computer or can I use some other
command processor?
My normal case is I just want to upload a few files that have recently
changed. Does it end up exchanging lists of filenames of my complete
website on every connect, or is it clever, and remembers the basic
state of each side from the last exchange.
Is there a way to do atomic uploads, so that the uploads show up to
the outside world all at once?
Surely these are common problems? How do people solve them?
It seems bizarre that a relatively simple problem that has been around
for decades still has not been thoroughly solved.
--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com
"Patriotism is fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave, blind as a stone, and as irrational as a headless hen."
~ Ambrose Bierce (born: 1842-06-24 died: 1914 at age: 71)
Wojtek
> FTP upload is driving me nuts because every time I upload a file that
> somebody is downloading the entire run aborts. If there is a large
> number of files to upload, or heavy web traffic it takes hours to
> complete the task.
I use robocopy which has a large number of switches to govern its
behaviour. I have not tried it over the Interent, but it does work on
our Intranet. YMMV
It writes directly to the far machine without needing a server
application.
Oh yes, it is Windows only...
--
Wojtek :-)
Roedy Green
quoted or indirectly quoted someone who said :
>I use robocopy which has a large number of switches to govern its
>behaviour. I have not tried it over the Interent, but it does work on
>our Intranet. YMMV
>
>It writes directly to the far machine without needing a server
>application.
>
>Oh yes, it is Windows only...
I found a promising candidate,
http://www.proginet.com/file-transfer-products/enterprise-file-transfer/cfi-suite
Catches: $1000 price tag and no Berkeley Unix support.
It uses a UDP-based protocol with deltas and compression.
--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com
"Let us pray it is not so, or if it is, that it will not become widely known."
~ Wife of the Bishop of Exeter on hearing of Darwin's theory of the common descent of humans and apes.