Shell Programming and Scripting

Hello,

I still have problems when trying to figure out if the status of an ftp was successful. I ftp to different types (nt, vax, unix, etc...) of machines. I am trying to write a universal script that will ftp a file and then check to see if the ftp was successful. I have tried the following:

verify file sizes: VAX and UNIX boxes have different file sizes
grep ftp result for:
code 226; some boxes have different sayings

Do you have ideas?

Thanks,
Barbara

In this post, I show the best technique that I have found to get the return codes. It is imperfect, and I'd love to see a better idea. Because it's so hard to know how long to sleep, I usually take my best shot, then double it. This technique wastes a lot of clock time.

Yeah, there are several codes that can result from an operation failing. You will need to check for them all. But it's not like every programmer can make up his own codes or anything. The codes are documented in RFC 959. Any ftp server that returns different codes is broken.

For transfers, I would just look for the presense of a code 226. That would indicate that the transfer worked. No code 226, it must've failed. But if you want to diagnose the error, this won't be enough. It depends on how far you want to go.

Also, I don't understand why your file sizes are off. This sounds like you did an ascii transfer when you needed a binary transfer.

Hope this can help
ftp -v hostname
-v that will show all responses from the remote server, as well as report on data transfer statistics. This is turned on
by default if ftp is running interactively with its input coming from the user's terminal.

Thanks!

In the past, I have checked for "226". There have been some cases where the bytes transferred, bytes sent, or transfer time contains "226". The job result is successful, yet the ftp was not successful. So this doesn't always work for my scenario.

The translation of code 226 is not consistent on all boxes. For example, I have seen "226 Closing data connection" or "226 Transfer Complete" as a translation for code 226.

I do have -v in my ftp command line. Because the "226" code is not consistent, the status returned is not always reliable.

Thanks,
Barbara

The 226 is consistent. The text that follows it is not. As the rfc says: If you get a 226 in response to a request for a transfer, the server is trying to tell you that it succeeded.

226 Transfer Complete
226 Closing Data Connection

mean almost the same thing. After a successful tranfer, the rfc allows a sever to keep a data connection open and re-use it for the next transfer. This is rarely done and the second message is underscoring that it wasn't done.

226 Everything's Groovy
226 That worked
226 looks good to me

would all be legal ways for a server to tell you that the transfer completed successfully. I've never seen anyone do that, but English is certainly not required by the rfc.

You really should read that RFC that I linked to in my earlier post. It will tell you what a server can and cannot do. The whole section on reply codes would especially help you out.

Thanks.

I'm sorry I guess I didn't explain myself correctly. This is my existing code:

ftpresults=`ftp -inv $ip_box_name <<EOB
user $userid $password
put $ftp_file $downstream_name
bye
EOB`

ftp_ctr=`echo "$ftpresults" | grep "226 Transfer complete" | wc -l`
echo $ftp_ctr
if [ $ftp_ctr = 1 ]
then
echo "FTP of " $file_name " to " $ip_box_name " was successful"
echo " "
else
ftp_error="true"
fi

In my prior reply, I was trying to say that if I did a grep on "226" alone, a count of 1 would be returned if the bytes transferred were a size which contained "226". I am trying to find something in the return of the ftp to grep. This will allow me to tell me if it was successful. I read the codes that you had passed along in your prior response.

Thanks,
Barbara

Try:
grep "^226"