I receive files by FTP in an input directory. Every 10 seconds a process checks if some new file has arrived to the input directory and then the process moves them to another directory to be read by a second process.

The problem is that there is no way to know if the download has finished or not. Sometimes my process moves the file when I have received only a part of it.
Is there any way to know if the FTP download is completed ? I have tested the file with 'lsof', 'stat', ... but it doesn't work.

The same process works fine in AIX. If I try to open a file that is downloading at the same time, I receive an error 'Resource is busy'. I use this error to check if the download is completed. But in Linux ( SuSe ) I don't receive any error.

Thanks

while I believe there's no "bullet-proof" solution to this.... you can try using 'fuser' [or lsof if you have one] to see if a file is being used by someone else.

Worth looking into at least.....

try checking for the ftp connection ...

there might be multiple unrelated ftp sessions

true ... it might be better to combine the netstat-ftp check with fuser so there is some sort of confirmation that the file is indeed being written to ...

Also, it might be possible to ask the ftp transmitter to send another file when the first ftp is complete. It would be a 0 byte or small file and then you would just check for the existense of that file.

that might sound like the easiest option but that would mean 2 scripts have to be modified ... considering that the same script works well in another platform --- i would opt to just modify 1 script myself as that would keep the appearance of new "features" to a minimum ...