Hi,
Can anyone recommend a good, remote server to remote server, ftp file transfer tool.

Proftpd has it installed by default, Just enable FXP
Do a search on it to learn what it is. Widely used for warez so don't leave it turned on.

if you have telnet access to one of the machines you can telnet in and then invoke the ftp command, so at the prompt you would type something like:

ftp microsoft.com

then it will prompt you for a login and password

once logged in try typing help or ? to get a list of commands...

to upload multiple files -- mput
upload a single file -- put

or to download multiple files -- mget
download a single file -- get

the commands are very similar to that of copy, move, etc where you can do wildcard (*.* for all files, *.html for all html files)

lcd directoryname changes your local directory to directoryname
cd directoryname changes the server's directory you ftped into

there are more options but you can do a search for the standard ftp functions of any linux/unix server on the net... i think its basically the same as if you invoke the ftp command in DOS as well...

hope this helps, this is how i transfer files from server to server without using my bandwidth... especially if they are big files

only constraint is, i haven't found out how to transfer directories and their files beneath them... but I mainly use it for huge files like 100 megs or so because i usually tar up my directories and move my whole site or whatever with 1 file.

Hi,
I want to thank everyone for your replies.

I guess what I was hoping for was a tool that would reside on my local pc and that would allow me to log on to a web site's directory and ftp files to a new directory located on a completely different server in a completely different data center. I was trying to avoid having to ftp the sites to my local pc then ftping them to the new server. I think if I do it that way I am going to have to reset a whole bunch of directory and file permissions on existing cgi scripts and such.

If such a tool doesnt exist then it sounds like maybe the next best option is to tar and then untar. The two servers that I need to transfer between are setup pretty much the same and are Linux/Unix.

I do not know how to tar and untar. Would someone be kind enough to give me tutorial or point me to documentation so I can learn how to do that?

Do you know if directory and file permission are kept in place if I do the web site transfers using tar and untar?

with the method i explained, you are going from server to server, not server to client pc to server.

anyway, if what i explain doesn't make sense about tarring and gzip then you can, when you telnet into your server, type man tar or man gzip

to tar everything from the current folder you are in through all your sub-directories including all files...

tar cvf nameoftarfileyouwant.tar *

that will place the file in the folder you type that in

after you tar it, if you have a big site etc... you would want to compress your tar file using gzip

gzip nameoftarfileyouwant.tar

that will replace your .tar file with a file of the same name except with .tar.gz at the end.

now, you have 1 file to deal with :) yay... once you figure out your ftp issues you are set,, hehe.

once on your target server or you wish to extract the contents...

gzip -d nameoftarfileyouwant.tar.gz

that will give you your tar file back...

now:

tar xvf nameoftarfileyouwant.tar

it will extract everything using the exact file structure that you had before starting in the folder you were in when you typed

and, yes, it does keep your file permissions in tact i do believe

i know this tutorial isn't quite in-depth but it outlines the steps you need to take anyway.

i use this method for backups, etc also... works quite well... run a cron job to dump your mysql db, then tar everything you would need to get your site up and running on another server quickly... very useful if your account has another hard drive to do nightly backups onto it.

http://flashfxp.com

You have to add a line in your proftpd.conf to enable fxp.