Question

Bash script: FTP login, download files, delete remote files

Asked by: atkinsonit

I'm trying to create a BASH script to perform the following tasks and I'm stuck on step 4

1) login to remote FTP server
2) download all *.txt files to $HOME/$DATE directory for that day (ie. 20080306)
3) create a list $DATE.list of all the files that were downloaded succesfully to $DATEDIR
4) delete all files in the $DATE.list from the remote server
5) logout. repeat daily!

Here's my script so far without step 4 (because all my tests have failed).  How would I send FTP commands to delete each file listed in the $DATE.list file?

Thanks!

#!/bin/bash
 
### getFTP v.1 #################
#
# Variables : use backquotes!#
DATE=`date +%Y%m%d`
HOME='/home/itdev/scripts/mepco'
#
HOST='remotehost'
USER='myUser'
PASSWD='myPasswd'
FILE='*.txt'
#
####################################
 
# Make directory of current date, make that directory local
mkdir $HOME/$DATE
cd $HOME/$DATE
 
# Login, run get files
ftp -inv $HOST <<END_SCRIPT
quote USER $USER
quote PASS $PASSWD
mget $FILE
!ls > $DATE.list
bye
 
# Cleanup
exit 0

                                  
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Asked On
2008-03-06 at 07:41:59ID23219862
Tags

bash

Topic

Bourne-Again Shell (bash)

Participating Experts
2
Points
250
Comments
6

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Answers

 

by: favorettiPosted on 2008-03-06 at 07:55:54ID: 21061471

Hello,

basically it looks like $DATE.list will contain the list of just downloaded txt files. Can't you just do mdelete *.txt?


Regards,
favoretti

 

by: atkinsonitPosted on 2008-03-06 at 08:48:22ID: 21062153

The reason I do not want to do that is randomly during the day more .txt files are being added to this folder, so I need to only delete the files that I've downloaded successfully. Or if a network issue caused a file to not download.  I've seen it where by the time my download is done, there are others there as the $DATE.list file is being created.

So I need to only delete the files that have downloaded during that day, and I'll get any newer files the next day when the script runs.

thanks!

 

by: omarfaridPosted on 2008-03-06 at 22:32:34ID: 21067798

Is ftp is the only way you could access the remote system?

You may need to exit the ftp session and run something like:

#!/bin/bash
 
### getFTP v.1 #################
#
# Variables : use backquotes!#
DATE=`date +%Y%m%d`
HOME='/home/itdev/scripts/mepco'
#
HOST='remotehost'
USER='myUser'
PASSWD='myPasswd'
FILE='*.txt'
#
####################################
 
# Make directory of current date, make that directory local
mkdir $HOME/$DATE
cd $HOME/$DATE
 
# Login, run get files
ftp -inv $HOST <<END_SCRIPT
quote USER $USER
quote PASS $PASSWD
mget $FILE
!ls > $DATE.list
bye
END_SCRIPT

for file in `cat $DATE.list`
do
ftp -inv $HOST <<END_SCRIPT
quote USER $USER
quote PASS $PASSWD
rm $file
bye
END_SCRIPT
done

# Cleanup
exit 0


This will do it through multiple ftp connections which might be too expensive in terms of time and load on the system.

 

by: favorettiPosted on 2008-03-06 at 23:16:47ID: 21067977

Yeah, I agree with omarfarid, ftp is not the best way to remove those files. Can you use ssh or so?

 

by: atkinsonitPosted on 2008-03-07 at 06:57:30ID: 21070651

Yes I agree with omarfarid as well... Since this server is a Windows box I have already requested them to at least use SSH and then I can use a shared key and psftp which allows me to run scripts in the psftp commands.  Hopefully they will get it installed.

FTP is just to dumb, i guess.  :)

 

by: atkinsonitPosted on 2008-06-09 at 14:07:28ID: 21746682

Here's what we came up with, we used LFTP to download and delete the files just downloaded.  Seems to work fine since the remote host would not give me anything but FTP.

cd ${HOME}/${DLOAD}
lftp -f ../lftp_script.ftp
cp -Rf *.txt $COPYTODIR
mv *.txt copied
 
# lftp_script.ftp #
open -u username,'password' ftp.domain.com
cd confirmation
mget *.txt
mrm *.txt
quit
                                              
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