News Group Posts

ftp script

From: Tony Lawrence <tony@aplawrence.com>
Subject: Re: ftp script - capturing the return code.  Help.
Date: Fri, 01 Nov 2002 12:28:32 -0500

S. Scott wrote:
 > I have a communication script that I have automated.  The script uses the
 > ftp protocol.  What I do is ping the server to make sure it is up. 
If I get
 > a good return I then ftp to the server and do my send and receive. 
If I get
 > a bad return I skip the process and try again in 20 minutes.
 >
 > My issue is that the server returns a good return but when I connect 
the ftp
 > session hangs.  What I need to do is do a test to make sure the ftp 
process
 > finished properly before I delete my file.  If the ftp process does not
 > complete correctly then I need to not delete the file and try again in my
 > next cronned schedule.
 >
 > Any and all suggestions are appreciated.

There are a couple of ways to handle this.

My preference is to use Perl and Net::Ftp

Or, you can use the scripting capabilities of programs like Kermit.
http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/ftpclient.html
http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/ftpscripts.html

You could also use Expect ( http://aplawrence.com/Books/expect.html )
but that's fairly painful.

Finally, you can spin off your script to background and set off another
script that watches for it to finish, checks that it did what it was
supposed to do etc.  Not the most fun to do, but it can be done.

-- 

Tony Lawrence
Unix/Linux Support Tips, How-To's, Tests and more: http://aplawrence.com
Free Unix/Linux Consultants list: http://aplawrence.com/consultants.html

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