Linux : Scripting automatic file transfers via FTP

You can FTP in script files as a scheduled tasks by doing the following:

Create the shell file that will be run by the cron job:

  echo "FTP process commencing"
  su <youruser> -c "ftp 192.1.2.2 < /home/youruser/prodftp.txt"
  echo "FTP process completed"

In the above file, the user must be a user that has been setup to automatically log into the FTP service on the remote machine 192.1.2.3 (see FTP: Automatic login under the Operating Systems/Linux category).

The text file /home/youruser/prodftp.txt will contain the actual FTP information, for example:

  cd backups
  ls
  binary
  prompt
  mdelete *.dmp
  ls
  mput *.dmp
  ls
  close
  exit

The prompt command is very important - it turns off the interactive prompting for moving multiple files.