Downloading ISO images from ftp server using lftp

[Dilawar Singh]

Inside NCBS, FTP is the fastest to download. Don't use browsers to download from
FTP, it will be quite slow. In terminal, you can use `wget`, `curl` or `lftp`.
It'd recommend lftp for it allows browsing ftp server.

There is no need for setting ftp_proxy variable; in fact it should be empty if
you are using command line utility.

One of the fastest ftp server with lot of linux related stuff on it is
ftp.riken.jp.

Let say I want to download iso of centos file. This is what I do in terminal if
using lftp.


$ lftp ftp.riken.jp
lftp ftp.riken.jp:~> ls
drwxr-xr-x 5 archive archive 49 Jun 24 2011 11
drwxr-xr-x 3 archive archive 23 Jan 6 2014 13
drwxr-xr-x 4 archive archive 53 Feb 28 14:25 14
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Jan 31 2014 CTAN -> tex-archive
drwxr-xr-x 12 archive archive 4096 Jun 19 00:21 FreeBSD
drwxr-xr-x 9 archive archive 4096 Aug 23 21:10 GNU
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 16 Dec 27 2010 Lecture
drwxr-xr-x 35 archive archive 4096 Feb 24 2014 Linux
drwxr-xr-x 8 root root 103 Feb 19 2014 Linux-new
drwxr-xr-x 30 archive archive 4096 Aug 24 00:13 NetBSD
drwxr-xr-x 14 archive archive 4096 Aug 24 03:52 OpenBSD
drwxr-xr-x 7 archive archive 110 Aug 23 21:03 OpenOffice
drwxr-xr-x 23 archive archive 118784 Aug 23 23:05 ROOT
drwxr-xr-x 3 archive archive 24 Sep 26 2008 Sun
drwxr-xr-x 13 archive archive 4096 Aug 23 21:06 X11
drwxr-xr-x 4 archive archive 4096 Apr 8 2013 cernlib
drwxr-xr-x 12 archive archive 4096 Aug 23 23:10 iris
drwxr-xr-x 3 archive archive 17 Jul 7 2008 lang
drwx------ 6 archive archive 69 Aug 7 12:35 misc
drwxr-xr-x 16 archive archive 4096 Aug 23 17:37 net
drwxr-xr-x 5 archive archive 53 Jul 5 2013 pc
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 31 2014 pub
drwxr-xr-x 12 archive archive 4096 Aug 23 21:15 sagemath
drwxr-xr-x 18 archive archive 4096 Aug 23 23:14 tex-archive
lftp ftp.riken.jp:/>

lftp ftp.riken.jp:/Linux/centos> cd Linux/centos/7
cd ok, cwd=/Linux/centos/7
lftp ftp.riken.jp:/Linux/centos/7> ls
drwxr-xr-x 3 archive archive 19 Jul 5 15:58 centosplus
drwxr-xr-x 3 archive archive 19 Jul 5 15:58 extras
drwxrwxr-x 3 archive archive 64 Jul 30 18:17 fasttrack
drwxrwxr-x 3 archive archive 19 Jul 5 22:04 isos
drwxr-xr-x 3 archive archive 19 Jul 5 11:06 os
drwxr-xr-x 5 archive archive 44 Jul 5 15:58 updates
lftp ftp.riken.jp:/Linux/centos/7> cd isos/
lftp ftp.riken.jp:/Linux/centos/7/isos> ls
drwxrwxr-x 2 archive archive 4096 Jul 21 16:01 x86_64
lftp ftp.riken.jp:/Linux/centos/7/isos> cd x86_64/
lftp ftp.riken.jp:/Linux/centos/7/isos/x86_64> ls
-rw-r--r-- 1 archive archive 2690 Jul 21 07:24 0_README.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 archive archive 4148166656 Jul 6 17:33 CentOS-7.0-1406-x86_64-DVD.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 archive archive 158766 Jul 7 12:16 CentOS-7.0-1406-x86_64-DVD.torrent
-rw-r--r-- 1 archive archive 7062159360 Jul 4 22:16 CentOS-7.0-1406-x86_64-Everything.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 archive archive 269937 Jul 7 12:16 CentOS-7.0-1406-x86_64-Everything.torrent
-rw-r--r-- 1 archive archive 1108344832 Jul 4 17:22 CentOS-7.0-1406-x86_64-GnomeLive.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 archive archive 42828 Jul 7 12:16 CentOS-7.0-1406-x86_64-GnomeLive.torrent
-rw-r--r-- 1 archive archive 1298137088 Jul 4 17:44 CentOS-7.0-1406-x86_64-KdeLive.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 archive archive 50062 Jul 7 12:16 CentOS-7.0-1406-x86_64-KdeLive.torrent
-rw-rw-r-- 1 archive archive 593494016 Jul 17 14:16 CentOS-7.0-1406-x86_64-Minimal.iso
-rw-r--r-- 2 archive archive 379584512 Jul 4 15:59 CentOS-7.0-1406-x86_64-NetInstall.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 archive archive 15019 Jul 7 12:16 CentOS-7.0-1406-x86_64-NetInstall.torrent
-rw-r--r-- 1 archive archive 720371712 Jul 4 17:00 CentOS-7.0-1406-x86_64-livecd.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 archive archive 28016 Jul 7 12:16 CentOS-7.0-1406-x86_64-livecd.torrent
-rw-rw-r-- 1 archive archive 486 Jul 21 07:24 md5sum.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 archive archive 1362 Jul 21 07:24 md5sum.txt.asc
-rw-rw-r-- 1 archive archive 542 Jul 21 07:24 sha1sum.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 archive archive 1418 Jul 21 07:24 sha1sum.txt.asc
-rw-rw-r-- 1 archive archive 1343 Jul 21 07:24 sha256sum.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 archive archive 2219 Jul 21 07:24 sha256sum.txt.asc
lftp ftp.riken.jp:/Linux/centos/7/isos/x86_64> get CentOS-7.0-1406-x86_64-livecd.iso
`...S-7.0-1406-x86_64-livecd.iso' at 91933520 (12%) 371.5K/s eta:33m [Receiving data]


Usually the speed is more than 300 Kb/s, sometimes touching all the way to
1.5Mb/s.

LFTP can also be used to download a full folder on ftp server (think database).

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/113886/how-do-you-recursively-ftp-a-folder-in-linux


Dilawar