Moving files with FTP ?

[graham_k]

I have a one too reliable site where I often want to upload very large amounts of data by FTP. For reasons of my own, I always want to overwrite the FRP site, rather than delete it & write to an empty directory.

I would like to copy the data to be uploaded into an empty directory on my PC and then use F6 to move it to the FTP server. That way, if the transfer fails, I can just start an other transfer and, eventually, when the source directory is empty, I would know that the transfer is complete.

If transfer breaks off, I currently don't know how far it went, or where to resume, so I repeatedly try to copy all until it is eventually successful.

So, is true move (or copy + delete) available with Total Commander?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Clo]

Hello !

• The “Move” function doesn't work for FTP by design.
- Hence, if you are sure that you want to delete the local files you have uploaded, you ought do this by hand, at your own risks whether the uploaded ones are suddendtly no longer reachable, destroyed by the server (that occured for me some years ago…), or damaged…

 Kind regards,
Claude
Clo

[Hacker]

Or perhaps using Commands - Synchronize Dirs...

HTH
Roman

[graham_k]

Clo, thanks, but deleting is not the goal. I want to be sure to have copied all of the source directory, and the only idea that I have is to copy it from the source PC directory to a temp PC directory and then *move* that, so that, so that when it is all deleted, then I know that all files have been uploaded. If I could be sure of that with copy – even when transfer interrupts and is resumed – then I would copy.

Hacker, Synch is also a possibility, but can I be certain? Especially given the time zone offset the server, which is not in the same timezone as me...

[Sheepdog]

Synchronize dirs and FTP servers


1. Purpose

This function can be used to keep an Internet Server like a personal homepage up to date. The pages are edited on the local machine, and only the modified pages are uploaded. You need to take special care to make this work correctly! Therefore please read the following very carefully:

2. The problem with file date/times and FTP

Normally when you copy a file from one local directory to another, it keeps its 'last modified' date and time. However, when you upload to an FTP server, there is no function available to tell the server what the date/time of the file is! Therefore, the file will always get the current local time on the FTP server! This is a problem, because even after the upload, the local and remote directory will be different!

3. How this is solved in Total Commander

The synchronize function sets the date/time stamp of the local file to the date/time of the remote file after it has successfully uploaded the file. Now the two files will look identical! However, this may cause other problems: You cannot synchronize this local directory with any other directory on the same machine, or with a second FTP site, because every time you upload a file, its date/time changes! Therefore it is important that if you use synchronize between a directory and FTP, you do not use synchronize with this directory to more than one location! New: Total Commander does NOT change the date/time of the local file(s) if the option "ignore dates" is checked.

4. Other problems and their solutions

Problem: The FTP server may be in a different time zone than your computer! For example, the server could be located in California, while you are in New York, or even in Europe!
Solution: Before comparing, select the time zone difference in hours between your location and the server. If the server is to the west, the difference is positive. Example: From New York to California it's 3 hours, and from Germany 9 hours.

Problem: Before you started to use Synchronize dirs, you uploaded the files using Total Commander directly, or some other tool. Now even identical files will look different!
Solution: To avoid that you need to re-upload or download all files which are identical anyway, select all files from which you know that they are identical. Right click on them, then choose 'Set local file date to remote date'. This will make the files look identical.


Problem: Unix machines distinguish between upper- and lowercase file names. Windows machines, however, can only display mixed case names, but do not distinguish between files with different case.
Solution: When Total Commander uploads a file to an FTP server, and a file with the same name but different case already exists on the server, the uploaded file will get the name of the already existing file. This avoids that two files with the same name will exist in the same directory. If you want to upload a different file name with the file, you will have to delete the target file first (select+right click menu->delete). For files which do not already exist on the server, you can choose whether the file should be uploaded without a name change, or with the name converted to lowercase.

Problem: Unix machines store text files in a different way than DOS/Windows machines. Unix machines store the line end sign in a single character, while DOS/Windows uses two characters (carriage return / line feed). Therefore text files (including HTML) are smaller on Unix than on DOS machines!
Solution: When Total Commander encounters two files with same time stamp, but different size, it counts the line ends of the local files, and calculates the size of the Unix-style text file from this. If the sizes match, the Synchronize function will show the following symbol:

For more information, see the Synchronize dirs dialog box.

[graham_k]

Thanks, that it very helpful

[Maxi]

I now a very cool Tool for updating a ftp directory.

save2FTP

It checks not the synchronisation of local and FTP Dir.
Instead it checks, if a local Directory is changing. Every time you
change or add a file to the local dir, it will upload this file to the specified ftp dir. so your ftp dir is automatically always up to date.

BUT!

I search for a possibility to move files ON the ftp server from one dir to an other (on the same server)

[Hacker]

HTH
Roman