COMPRESS FILES ON THE FLY USING FTP

Not sure if this can help

Try  http://www.webcom.com/help/ftp/compression.shtml

thanks for link..unfortunately the ftp client used is that which comes with OS/390 Mainframe

There is a couple of ways we handle this.
have a CRON job zip the file before it is FTP'd
You will obviously have to change your FTP script to only send *.zip files.

We have a cron job that runs every couple of minutes that says

if file.txt exists than compress it in our case to file.tar
if file.tar exists then ftp it to server x

the ftp script that runs as a cron, looks like

ftp -n <<SCRIPT                                                                
open 192.168.1.1                                                                  
user anonymous abc@companyxxx.com                                                      
put /home/exceed/interface/reports/dlr_backorder.tar dlr_backorder.tar          
put /home/exceed/interface/reports/dlr_CustGroup.tar dlr_CustGroup.tar          
put /home/exceed/interface/reports/dlr_models.tar dlr_models.tar                
put /home/exceed/interface/reports/dlr_price.tar dlr_price.tar                  
put /home/exceed/interface/reports/dlr_qoh.tar dlr_qoh.tar                      
put /home/exceed/interface/reports/dlr_reserved.tar dlr_reserved.tar            
put /home/exceed/interface/reports/dlr_salesorder.tar dlr_salesorder.tar        
quit                                                                            
SCRIPT                                                                          
exit                                                                            
:



Hope this leads you in the right direction

Cheers
Ian

Hi again,

Wasn't too sure if you'd know what I meant by tar.
tar is the unix ( in our case AIX ) "equivalent" of zip.
Winzip opens *.tar files with no problem so end user does not need tar.
In unix if you go man tar you will get the syntax.
man cron gives the syntax for the "scheduled task"

Cheers again
Ian

Const71,

A small note: Parkerig has a good idea. However, a cursory review of the TAR document is that TAR DOES NOT compress files (in fact the documentation available at the OpenGroup specifically recommends running COMPRESS against the archive built by TAR). TAR is merely a packager of multiple files into a single archive.

The idea, however, is reasonable. A script can run the appropriate version of ZIP to compress the files. They can then be transmitted as BINARY files by FTP (the binary is important here, attempting to move binary files between disparate systems will not work reliably without the BINARY specification).

The FTP protocol RFC does not, to my recollection, make any provisions for "on the fly" compression.

I hope that the preceding is helpful.

- Bob (aka RLGSC)

Howdy,
Bob thanks for info.

I have just tested the other inbuilt options - DO NOT RUN without readning man pack or man compress first !

(1) pack - not winzip compatiable
(2) compress - not winzip compatiable.

This lead me on a search for a unix ZIP.

the below URL has a number of zip executables for various OS

http://www.gzip.org/#exe
http://www.gzip.org/ - hompage so you can get FAQ, source and compile etc. if required.

Cheers to all
Ian

if you are running a dial up modem, say as 56k each end, in reality you are compressing the files in midstream about as best as you can, "on the fly", and .zip'ing it will only be improving the intial storage requirements at the receiving end

among my prior efforts, I just set up a batch file to pick up and move the file desired for xmit, and pkzip was suffiicient, running on schedule (of when the file available). Script would copy (or move) file to directory for sending (or for pickup). The xmit scheduler itself ran dependent on whether the directory was empty or had content

I think I am leaning towards compressing the file on the host...FTPing the file to a windows server...but the question concerning compatibility remains. Is it possible to decompress a file that was compressed on the IBM host on the windows platform?

actually, gzip compression is understood by winzip.  If you gzip'd the file prior to ftp, then ftp the file using binary mode, winzip will be able to uncompress the file.

Just wondering if you considered secure copy as it is available in most *nix platforms as well as windows and the -C option compresses automatically.