Using lftp mirror command

Lftp mirror command does not replace recursive copy that is available in NcFTP. It is really mirror command and it does a lot of extra homework directed at this goal, which is unnecessary and annoying if you just need to send directory tree to the other server.

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Using lftp mirror to copy your website files

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• Using lftp mirror to copy your website files

Written by Jacob Nicholson

Views: 12,422

Published: Jan 28, 2013

Comments: 3

In this article I'm going to teach you how to use the lftp mirror command in order to copy your website files from another web host to your VPS (Virtual Private Server) or dedicated server with InMotion Hosting.

The Linux lftp command is a sophisticated FTP/HTTP client that is also capable of being able to mirror the entire contents of a remote website to your local server, or vice-versa. Using the lftp command on your server can help save you time when copying website files from a remote server.

You can directly transfer the files right to your server, instead of having to first locally copy files to your desktop, just to upload them again to your server. Typically web hosts will have higher bandwidth connections than your residential Internet connection, so directly transferring files between two servers with lftp is an ideal method to use if you've got a lot of files to transfer.

In order to follow along with the steps below you'll need to have either a VPS or dedicated server so that you have SSH access to your server in order to run the lftp mirror command.

lftp mirror remote files to your server

Using the steps below I'll show you how to quickly connect to a remote server where you might have website files stored, and then mirror the entire contents of that website to your server using the lftp mirror commands.

1. Login to your server via SSH with the cPanel user you'd like to copy remote files to.
2. After logging into SSH run the following command to get to your public directory:

   cd ./public_html/

   You can now run the following command to ensure you're in the right directory:

   pwd

   You should get back something like this:

   /home/userna5/public_html

   In most cases your /public_html/ directory should be empty if you haven't placed any files on the server yet. If you wanted to do your file transfer to another directory such as a sub-directory, you would want to use the cd command again to end up in that directory.

3. In this example we're going to connect to our old remote server at example.com using the FTP username userna5 and the password of passWORD. Run the following command to begin our lftp session to this remote server:

   lftp -u userna5,passWORD example.com

   If your FTP password includes special characters such as $ or ) you'd want to leave off the password like this, then type it in manually when prompted:

   lftp -u userna5 example.com

   In some cases certain servers will now allow you to connect with lftp with the default settings, you can try the following to connect to these type of servers:

   lftp -u userna5,passWORD example.com -e "set ftp:ssl-allow off"

   You should end up at the lftp prompt when you've successfully connected to the remote server, it would look like this:

   lftp [email protected]:~>

4. Now that you have a FTP connection established to the remote server, the next step is to change directories into the remote directory with your files. To view all of the folders on the remote server you can use the following command:

   ls

   It should give you back something similar to this:

   lrwxrwxrwx 1 userna5 userna5 33 Jul 16 2011 access-logs -> /usr/local/apache/domlogs/userna5
   drwxr-xr-x 2 userna5 userna5 4096 Nov 20 2010 backup
   drwxr-x--- 4 userna5 12 4096 Jan 28 14:14 etc
   drwxr-x--x 11 userna5 userna5 20480 Jan 10 12:52 mail
   drwxr-x--- 11 userna5 99 4096 Jan 28 14:15 public_html
   drwxr-xr-x 10 userna5 userna5 4096 Jan 22 13:56 tmp
   lrwxrwxrwx 1 userna5 userna5 11 Jul 16 2011 www -> public_html

   In this case our website files are stored in the /public_html/ directory so we can run the following command to get to this directory:

   cd public_html

5. Now that you've changed into the remote directory where you'd like to mirror all of the files to your server from, run the following command to begin the file transfer:

   mirror -c

   This uses the lftp mirror command to mirror the entire remote directory to our current local directory that we changed to prior to starting the transfer. The -c option is for continue and allows the mirror to continue from a previously failed transfer.

   After the file transfer has completed you should see the status of the full transfer which looks something like this:

   lftp [email protected]:/public_html> mirror -c
   Total: 175 directories, 1316 files, 0 symlinks
   New: 1316 files, 0 symlinks
   20750001 bytes transferred in 20 seconds (1010.8K/s)
   To be removed: 1 directory, 0 files, 0 symlinks

6. Type either exit or quit to leave the lftp session:

   lftp [email protected]:/public_html> exit

You should now know how to use the lftp mirror command on your VPS or dedicated server in order to transfer over website files from a remote server.

lftp Command Mirror Files and Directories

August 5, 2012 | nixCraft | 8 comments

How do I mirror files from remote ftp server using lftp command? How do put the entier directory from a local disk to a remote ftp server (reverse mirror) using lftp command under Linux and Unix like operating systems?

Tutorial details
Difficulty	Easy
Root privileges	No
Requirements	lftp ftp client

lftp command is a file transfer program that allows sophisticated ftp, http and other connections to other hosts. lftp command has builtin mirror which can download or update a whole directory tree. There is also reverse mirror (mirror -R) which uploads or updates a directory tree on server. Mirror can also synchronize directories between two remote servers, using FXP if available. The syntax is:

 
mirror
mirror options
mirror -c
mirror -R
 

Example: How to mirror files from a remote ftp server (get files)

First, you need to connect to the remote ftp server using the following syntax:
lftp ftp.cyberciti.biz
Type username and password:

lftp ftp.cyberciti.biz:~> user [email protected]

Sample outputs:

Password:
lftp [email protected]@rawlogs.bitgravity.com:~>

Type ls command to see a list of files:

lftp ftp.cyberciti.biz:~> ls

Sample outputs:

-rw-r--r--    1 80       www      36809419 Jun 24 23:59 2012-06-24.log.gz
-rw-r--r--    1 80       www      100912271 Jun 25 23:59 2012-06-25.log.gz
-rw-r--r--    1 80       www      102926055 Jun 26 23:59 2012-06-26.log.gz

To mirror all of the above files in the current directory, enter:

lftp ftp.cyberciti.biz:~> mirror

With mirror lftp command you can specify source directory to local target directory. If target directory ends with a slash, the source base name is appended to target directory name. Source and/or target can be URLs pointing to directories. The syntax is:

lftp ftp.cyberciti.biz:~> mirror source target

OR

lftp ftp.cyberciti.biz:~> mirror logs/ /data/wwwlogs

I highly recommend that you start mirror job with resume option. This make sure if ftp mirror was failed due to network connection it will only download partial file

lftp ftp.cyberciti.biz:~> mirror -c source target

OR

lftp ftp.cyberciti.biz:~> mirror --continue

To download only newer files (-c won't work):

lftp ftp.cyberciti.biz:~> mirror --only-newer

OR

lftp ftp.cyberciti.biz:~> mirror -n

You can speed up ftp mirror operation by downloading files in parallel using the following syntax:

lftp ftp.cyberciti.biz:~> mirror -p

To download 10 files in parallel, enter:

lftp ftp.cyberciti.biz:~> mirror --parallel=10

You can use pget to transfer every single file:

lftp ftp.cyberciti.biz:~> mirror -c  --use-pget-n=10

Example: How to reverse mirror files to a remote ftp server (put files)

You need to pass -R or --reverse option to do reverse mirror i.e. put all files from a local disk to a remote ftp server including sub-dirs and all files in it. In this example reverse mirror /home/project/website/version5/ to a remote ftp server called ftp.cyberciti.biz:
First, you need to connect to the remote ftp server using the following syntax:
lftp ftp.cyberciti.biz
Type username and password:

lftp ftp.cyberciti.biz:~> user [email protected]

Sample outputs:

Password:
lftp [email protected]@rawlogs.bitgravity.com:~>

Change local directory to /home/project/website/version5/:

lftp ftp.cyberciti.biz:~> lcd /home/project/website/version5/

Sample outputs:

lcd ok, local cwd=/home/project/website/version5

To upload, enter:

lftp ftp.cyberciti.biz:~> mirror -R

OR set local directory and remote upload directory as follows:

lftp ftp.cyberciti.biz:~> mirror -R /home/vivek/projects/website/version10 /var/www/html

When using -R, the first directory is local and the second is remote. If the second directory is omitted, base name of first directory is used. If both directories are omitted, current local and remote directories are used. If target directory ends with a slash (except root directory) then base name of source directory is appended. To quit from ftp session type:

lftp ftp.cyberciti.biz:~> quit

A complete list of lftp mirror command options

Taken from the man page:

 
            -c, --continue      continue a mirror job if possible
            -e, --delete        delete files not present at remote site
                --delete-first       delete old files before transferring new ones
                --depth-first        descend into subdirectories before transferring files
            -s, --allow-suid         set suid/sgid bits according to remote site
                --allow-chown   try to set owner and group on files
                --ascii         use ascii mode transfers (implies --ignore-size)
                --ignore-time        ignore time when deciding whether to download
                --ignore-size        ignore size when deciding whether to download
                --only-missing  download only missing files
                --only-existing download only files already existing at target
            -n, --only-newer    download only newer files (-c won't work)
                --no-empty-dirs don't create empty directories (implies --depth-first)
            -r, --no-recursion  don't go to subdirectories
                --no-symlinks   don't create symbolic links
            -p, --no-perms      don't set file permissions
                --no-umask      don't apply umask to file modes
            -R, --reverse       reverse mirror (put files)
            -L, --dereference   download symbolic links as files
            -N, --newer-than=SPEC    download only files newer than specified time
                --on-change=CMD      execute the command if anything has been changed
                --older-than=SPEC    download only files older than specified time
                --size-range=RANGE   download only files with size in specified range
            -P, --parallel[=N]  download N files in parallel
                --use-pget[-n=N]     use pget to transfer every single file
                --loop          loop until no changes found
            -i RX, --include RX include matching files
            -x RX, --exclude RX exclude matching files
            -I GP, --include-glob GP include matching files
            -X GP, --exclude-glob GP exclude matching files
            -v, --verbose[=level]    verbose operation
                --log=FILE      write lftp commands being executed to FILE
                --script=FILE        write lftp commands to FILE, but don't execute them
                --just-print, --dry-run   same as --script=-
                --use-cache          use cached directory listings
            --Remove-source-files    remove files after transfer (use with caution)
            -a             same as --allow-chown --allow-suid --no-umask

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