a search for a decent ftp client

hakova · Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2025 8:04 pm Post subject: a search for a decent ftp client

Hi there,

I am using Mandriva 2025.0 with KDE 4.2. Unfortunately, kftpgrabber 0.8.99 is a joke. It crashes every time you click Settings > Configure kftpgrabber, but even if it didn't, there is no way to delete a remote file or change its permissions as far as I can tell. Because of this reason, I use gftp 2.0.18. It is stable, but it doesn't fit with the KDE look, not to mention to use more resources. At least it does most of what it is supposed to do, however I could not figure out how to pause and resume a file transfer. Now this may be because the server is not supporting these options, but I just wanted to make sure if I was missing something. I would appreciate if anyone here using gftp can tell me

1. if these options are available for gftp.
2. how to make them work.
3. if it is not possible to pause/resume file transfer with gftp, which ftp client would you recommend with those options available (including command line)?

Thanks in advance,

Hakan

Germ · Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2025 12:48 am Post subject:

Lord.DragonFly.of.Dawn · Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2025 1:49 am Post subject:

ncftp has always served me well.

if i need a GUI i tend to use whatever file manager my WM provides, Windows explorer (exploder), nautilus, konqueror (etc); they get the job done.

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masinick

gftp, over the years, has been one of my favorite GUI based FTP clients, because I can select a server and access information and save the information, if I expect to visit the site more than once.

For really basic transfers, such as the transfers of ISO images, I often simply use the file transfer facilities provided by the Web browser. Firefox, Seamonkey, and Opera have all worked well for me in this way.

If I want to have the capability of potentially restarting a transfer, I've used wget (a command based tool) on many occasions.

Between gftp ( GTK based tool), Web browsers, and the wget command, these have met all of my personal needs well.

Depending on what you are doing, you might want to consider using Konqueror, since it has both file browsing and Web browsing capabilities. Konqueror, in the Web browsing capacity, can be used as an FTP client. I've used it that way successfully many times.

I tried to check around, and though there are probably plenty of possible FTP clients, I did not have much initial success in finding anything other than what we've discussed. I'd suggest that if you really need the pause, restart, retransfer kinds of capabilities, consider wget; it is not all that difficult to learn; it comes with very good documentation, otherwise stick with a browser. I'd say that I actually use a browser to transfer files 80-90% of the time, and I probably download files at least a few times a week.

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hakova

Thanks for all the replies. I like gftp, because it is simple and it does not lack the basic functionality. I checked the server side, it ran proftpd and supported resumption of file transfer. Therefore, it looks like gftp does not seem to be capable of doing so, from the client side.

Tried ncftp and liked it. The help command makes it crash consistently in my system for some reason. Already reported a bug to the maintainer. ncftp seems to resume both download and upload. Therefore it seems to be the winner in my case.

I never thought about wget, thanks Brian for bringing it to my attention. It is so powerful and yet so simple, it is an excellent summary of *nix philosophy by itself! Unfortunately, it does not support uploading, which was the original problem that lead me to initiate this thread. I was uploading a large file which was interrupted overnight and I had to start over in the morning from scratch.

Anyway, thanks again for all your inputs. In summary, ncftp for uploads and downloads, wget for downloads are capable of resuming file transfer. GUI tools seem to not support this yet.

DocZayus · Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2025 10:50 am Post subject:

Might I suggest Firefox's FireFTP extension?

It's what I use.

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mushroom

mmmna · . . . . Joined: 21 Apr 2025 Posts: 7224

I just tried FireFox 3.0 as an FTP browser, it can pause and resume, I paused it and restarted it 4 times. No FTP extensions installed.

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masinick · Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2025 3:27 am Post subject:

Good. I believe that I've done that many times too, just not recently.

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hakova · Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2025 4:29 am Post subject:

Well, thanks to all who replied. It is true that gftp resumes the download. I didn't check if it resumes the upload as well, but I have no reason to doubt that. I was confused by the lack of pause / resume buttons or options in the GUI or menus, I guess. It is good to know that firefox is another decent ftp client, with pause/resume capabilities without any extensions BTW.

I hope I didn't mislead anybody here.

Hakan

nukes · Linux Guru Joined: 29 Aug 2025 Posts: 4558

I've been using gftp for a while, mostly uploading stuff to the xbox.
It definately supports resuming uploads/downloads.

However, it is buggy/fragile as h***. Can sometimes take a few attempts to do a transfer due to it crashing.

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