UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

What is the command needed to FTP a full dir including sub folders and files, at unix command line level,

FTP is not able to ftp entire directories. You must either use the "mget" command or tar your directories and transfer your tar files.

ftp alone will not do it.
You can tar or cpio the directory tree
into a file then send the file then
unbundle it on the remote system (perhaps with
rsh).
You could write a shell program to
automate all this though (should be fun!)

i ftp an entire directory and all subs every day.. if you look in the ip netwroking forum, you will see a thread about automating this task..

the command i use is:

get dirname.tar.gz

it seems to work fine, although it generates quite a load on the netwprk as well as the server..

e0-

Some FTP servers will tar an entire directory tree for you. Not all, though. It's certainly worth a try however. It would work like this: You see a directory you want to snarf. It's name is 'snarf_me'. If the server allows it, you can simply type:

get snarf_me.tar.gz

If it's allowed, you will get one large file, that when unpacked will duplicate the directory. The only caveat with that is unless you have a good amount of bandwidth you could very easily bog yourself down with files tucked away in there that you don't really want.