How to sync files with lftp

Table of Contents

How to sync files with lftp

lftp is handy command line tool when you want to mirror files from a local drive to a remote FTP folder. While a regular FTP application only allows you to upload or download files, lftp allows you to also keep the files in sync.

Requirements

• Linux
• macOS (with external package manager, such as Homebrew)
• Windows (with PowerShell and external package manager, such as Chocalety)

The .netrc file

Our first step is to edit the hidden .netrc configuration file which is normally located in our home directory. This file is used for authentication information and is useful if we do not want to enter username and password every time we log-in to the FTP site.

The following information will be added to the .netrc file. Please note that the words inside the brackets are < placeholders >:

machine <mysite>
login <myusername>
password <mypassword>

The quickest way is to run the following command which does not care if the file does not exist yet.

$ echo “machine <mysite> login <myusername> password <mypassword>” >> ~/.netrc

Here is a real world example of the same command:

$ echo “machine ftp.mysite.com login geek password somethingclever” >> ~/.netrc

If you prefer, you can also edit the file manually with your favourite text editor.

$ cd ~
$ nano .netrc

The chmod command

Next we will change the file permissions of .netrc so that the file can only be read by ourselves.

$ chmod 600 ~/.netrc

Your file permissions should now look something like this if you type ls -la in your home directory:

$ ls -la ~/.netrc
-rw-------   1 geek  staff     90 18 Aug 18:48 /home/geek/.netrc

The lftp command

We are now ready to upload files. With the following command we can mirror a local folder to a directory on the remote FTP server. You will notice that username and password will not be requested because it has already been stored in the .netrc file.

$ lftp -c "open <mysite>; mirror --continue --reverse --delete <source> <destination>"

This is what the command would look when you type it in the shell:

$ lftp -c "open ftp.mysite.com; mirror --continue --reverse --delete /home/geek/myfolder public_html"

Further Information

For further information on the lftp command, type:

$ man lftp