Computer Tutorials: The DOS FTP Client

The average person doesn't know that the DOS console has a built in FTP client. I bet you didn't, right? It is actually a very simple and straight-forward way to access an FTP server. In this tutorial I'll explain how it is used and why it is so much more useful compared to other FTP clients. It is assumed that the reader has basic knowledge of how an FTP client works, and should have very basic knowledge of DOS.

You don't have to follow along with the instructions. In fact, it may become annoying if you do since most FTP servers will close connections that have been idling for a certain amount of time. Just use this as a reference after reading it completely.

Let's start by using it:

• Go to the Start menu, and choose "Run..." (alternatively you can hold down the windows key and press "R").
• Type "cmd" and press OK. You should be at the DOS command prompt.
• Type in "FTP" and hit the Enter key. You should be at an "ftp>" prompt.
  Tip: If you want to skip the next step you could use "FTP ftp.microsoft.com" instead of just "FTP".
• Type "OPEN ftp.microsoft.com" and hit the Enter key. You should be at a "User (ftp.microsoft.com(none)):" prompt. This is where you enter the username.
• In this case, we will use the anonymous account. Type "anonymous" and hit the Enter key. You should be prompted for a password.
• Microsoft asks the user to enter an email address for the password. You can use yours or give a fake one: Type "[email protected]" and hit the Enter key. It should say "Anonymous user logged in." and drop you at an "ftp>" prompt.

Now that we are logged in to Microsoft's ftp server, let's see what they have:

• Type "dir" and hit the Enter key to get a directory listing. A list of files and folders should be listed. On the left of each line you should see something like "dr-xr-xr-x". We, as anonymous users, are only concerned with the first letter and the last three letters.

  The first letter will be a "d" if that is a directory, if it is a file it will be a "-".

  The last three letters tell us what kind of access we, as anonymous users, have.

  • The first letter will be an "r" if we have read access (the ability to download the file) and a "-" if we don't.
  • The second letter will be a "w" if we have write access (the ability to change/delete the file) and a "-" if we don't.
  • The third letter will be an "x" if we have the ability to execute (for files) or the ability to search (for directories) and a "-" if we don't.

  Alternatively, if we want to have the file permissions and file sizes omitted we can do a simple "ls" command instead of "dir".

  Let's change to a directory that we have read access for:

• Type "cd Products". The cd command stands for "change directory".
• Here we see more directories. Let's assume we know what directories we want to go into. Type "cd windows/windows95/cdromextras/funstuff" and hit the Enter key. You should now be in the specified folder.
• Type "dir" and hit Enter to see the files.

Now let's download a file. There should be a "clouds.exe file, let's get it.

Type "get clouds.exe c:\clouds.exe". This will download the clouds.exe file to your C: drive. You can specify any existing directory you want.

Now let's upload a file. We can't upload files anywhere in this ftp server that I know of. So let's just pretend we can.

Type "put c:\examplefile.txt" and it will upload example.txt to the current directory. But since we don't have access to do so here it will say "access denied".

To exit the server type "close" to keep the ftp session running but close the connection to ftp.microsoft.com, or type "bye" to close the connection and end the ftp session.
 

I hope this has helped. Questions can be emailed to me at the address at the bottom of the screen. Below I have listed of all the FTP commands available to you. Enjoy!

• ascii Change the file transfer mode to ASCII. This is used for transferring files that are plain ASCII text, such as HTML documents, Perl scripts, etc.
• binary Change the file transfer mode to binary. This is used for all binary data, such as graphics, compressed files, audio clips, etc.
• bye Terminate the FTP session by closing the connection to the remote host and exiting the FTP client. (See also: close
• cd (remote directory) Changes the remote working directory -- works just like the DOS command of the same name. Remember that in UNIX we use normal ("forward") slashes, not the DOS-style backslashes, and that there must be a single whitespace between the command cd and the first character of the argument. Relative paths may be used:
  • cd .. Change to the parent of the current remote working directory.
  • cd ../some_dir Change to another directory named some_dir that shares the parent of the current remote working directory.
  • cd some_dir Change to a subdirectory of the current remote working directory named some_dir.
• cdup Change to the parent of the current remote working directory. (Same as cd ..)
• chmod (mode) (file or directory) Change the mode, or permissions of a remote file or directory. (In some cases, chmod may be unavailable to you via FTP.) - Find an online tutorial on Unix file permissions to futher understand the chmod command.
• close Closes the connection to the remote host, but does not exit the FTP client.
• delete (file name) Deletes a remote file. If you wish to delete a directory, see rmdir.
• dir [remote_dir] [local_file] Print a listing of the current remote working directory if remote_dir is not specified, or the directory remote_dir. If local_file is specified, the output of dir is printed to that file.
• get (remote_file) [local_file] Retrieves the file remote_file. if local_file is not specified, the file name on the local machine will be the same as that on the remote. (There is no magic behind this command. If you mistakenly use the wrong transfer mode, the file will probably be useless to you. Remember: ascii for plain text files, binary for everything else.)
• help [command] Prints an informative message about command if it is given as an argument, or a list of all commands otherwise.
• lcd (directory) Changes the local working directory. (The working directory at the time you start ftp is the starting working directory.)
• ls [directory] [local_file] Prints a listing of the contents of the remote directory specified, or the current working directory if none is specified. If a local_file is specified, prints the listing to this file.
• mkdir (directory_name) Creates a directory named directory_name on the remote file system.
• open (host) [port] Connect to the specified host FTP server. If a port is specified, attempt to connect to an FTP server on that port number.
• put (local_file) [remote_file] Stores local_file on the remote file system. If remote_file is specified, store the file using that name (otherwise under the same name as local_file).
• pwd Prints the name of the remote working directory.
• quit A synonym for bye.
• reget (remote_file) [local_file] Like get, except that if local_file exists and is smaller than remote_file, assumes that a previous transfer of this file failed and transfers from the apparent point of the failure. (Must be supported by the server.)
• remotehelp [command] Like help, but gets information from the remote host FTP server.
• rename (from) (to) Rename the remote file specified by from with the new name specified by to.
• rmdir (some_dir) Remove (delete) a remote directory named some_dir. The directory must be empty.

Questions/Comments? [email protected]