Next: C.4 Downloading files Up: C FTP Tutorial and Previous: C.2 Logging In

# C.3 Poking Around

Okay, we're in. `ftp>` is our prompt, and the `ftp` program is waiting for commands. There are a few basic commands you need to know about. First, the commands

`ls`

and

`dir`

both give file listings (where is an optional argument specifying a particular filename to list). The difference is that `ls` usually gives a short listing and `dir` gives a longer listing (that is, with more information on the sizes of the files, dates of modification, and so on).

The command

`cd`

will move to the given directory (just like the `cd` command on UNIX or MS-DOS systems). You can use the command

`cdup`

to change to the parent directory.

The command

`help`

will give help on the given `ftp` (such as `ls` or `cd`). If no command is specified, `ftp` will list all of the available commands.

If we type `dir` at this point we'll see an initial directory listing of where we are.

`ftp> dir
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls.
total 1337
`

    dr-xr-xr-x  2 root     wheel         512 Aug 13 13:55 bin
    drwxr-xr-x  2 root     wheel         512 Aug 13 13:58 dev
    drwxr-xr-x  2 root     wheel         512 Jan 25 17:35 etc
    drwxr-xr-x 19 root     wheel        1024 Jan 27 21:39 pub
    drwxrwx-wx  4 root     ftp-admi     1024 Feb  6 22:10 uploads
    drwxr-xr-x  3 root     wheel         512 Mar 11  1992 usr

226 Transfer complete.
921 bytes received in 0.24 seconds (3.7 Kbytes/s)
ftp>

Each of these entries is a directory, not an individual file which we can download (specified by the `d` in the first column of the listing). On most FTP archive sites, the publicly available software is under the directory `/pub`, so let's go there.

`ftp> cd pub
ftp> dir
200 PORT command successful.
150 ASCII data connection for /bin/ls (128.84.181.1,4525) (0 bytes).
total 846
`

    -rw-r--r--   1 root     staff        1433 Jul 12  1988 README
    -r--r--r--   1 3807     staff       15586 May 13  1991 US-DOMAIN.TXT.2
    -rw-r--r--   1 539      staff       52664 Feb 20  1991 altenergy.avail
    -r--r--r--   1 65534    65534       56456 Dec 17  1990 ataxx.tar.Z
    -rw-r--r--   1 root     other     2013041 Jul  3  1991 gesyps.tar.Z
    -rw-r--r--   1 432      staff       41831 Jan 30  1989 gnexe.arc
    -rw-rw-rw-   1 615      staff       50315 Apr 16  1992 linpack.tar.Z
    -r--r--r--   1 root     wheel       12168 Dec 25  1990 localtime.o
    -rw-r--r--   1 root     staff        7035 Aug 27  1986 manualslist.tblms
    drwxr-xr-x   2 2195     staff         512 Mar 10 00:48 mdw
    -rw-r--r--   1 root     staff        5593 Jul 19  1988 t.out.h

226 ASCII Transfer complete.
2443 bytes received in 0.35 seconds (6.8 Kbytes/s)
ftp>

Here we can see a number of (interesting?) files, one of which is called `README`, which we should download (most FTP sites have a `README` file in the `/pub` directory).

Next: C.4 Downloading files Up: C FTP Tutorial and Previous: C.2 Logging In