FTPFS(4) Kernel Interfaces Manual FTPFS(4)
NAME
ftpfs - file transfer protocol (FTP) file system
SYNOPSIS
ftpfs [ -/dq ] [ -m mountpoint ] [ -a password ] system
DESCRIPTION
Ftpfs dials the TCP file transfer protocol (FTP) port, 21, on system and mounts itself (see bind(2)) on mountpoint (default /n/ftp) to pro-
vide access to files on the remote machine. If required by the remote machine, ftpfs will prompt for a user name and password. The user
names ftp and anonymous conventionally offer guest/read-only access to machines. Anonymous FTP may be called without user interaction by
using the -a option and specifying the password.
By default the file seen at the mount point is the user's remote home directory. The option -/ forces the mount point to correspond to the
remote root.
To avoid seeing startup messages from the server use option -q. To see all messages from the server use option -d.
To terminate the connection, unmount (see bind(1)) the mount point.
EXAMPLE
You want anonymous FTP access to the system export.lcs.mit.edu. The first import(4) command is only necessary if your machine does not
have access to the desired system, but another, called gateway in this example, does.
import gateway /net
ftpfs -a yourname@yourmachine export.lcs.mit.edu
SOURCE
/sys/src/cmd/ftpfs
SEE ALSO
bind(2)
BUGS
Symbolic links on remote Unix systems will always have mode 0777 and a length of 8.
After connecting to a TOPS-20 system, the mount point will contain only one directory, usually /n/ftp/PS:<ANONYMOUS>. However, walking to
any valid directory on that machine will succeed and cause that directory entry to appear under the mount point.
Ftpfs caches files and directories. A directory will fall from the cache after 5 quiescent minutes or if the local user changes the direc-
tory by writing or removing a file. Otherwise, remote changes to the directory that occur after the directory has been cached might not be
immediately visible.
There is no way to issue the appropriate commands to handle special synthetic FTP file types such as directories that automatically return
a tar of their contents.
FTPFS(4)