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'sftp' is seriously lacking relative to, say, ncftp: it has no command memory, no Tab-completion of file names, and so on. Is there a non-GUI tool for SFTP that people recommend?

Paul Hoffman
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4 Answers4

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LFTP can speak the SFTP protocol. If you're on Linux, it should be in your distribution's package repository (e.g. yum, apt-get, emerge, etc.).

James Sneeringer
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    debian's lftp doesn't seem to be compiled with libssl support, unfortunately. however, it shouldn't be hard to download and compile the source, adding ssl support here's some help to the OP on getting lftp working with sftp: http://how-to.wikia.com/wiki/How_to_use_lftp_as_a_sftp_client – cpbills May 12 '10 at 22:18
  • Nice link, cpbills. – James Sneeringer May 13 '10 at 00:30
  • James What if any advantage does it have over SFTP? @cpbills I see LFTP needs that ssl library, though it only mentions SFTP and SFTP is SSH (it doesn't mention FTPS - ftp over SSL), so i'm curious why would LFTP use an SSL library? – barlop Sep 06 '15 at 09:49
  • also, if it's 'cos e.g. openssh used the openssl library then http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/3424/how-is-openssl-related-to-openssh while openssh used to use TLS, it doesn't need to anymore, and it may be that it doesn't anymore.. http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/3424/how-is-openssl-related-to-openssh I don't know if the program you link to using openssl library is related to that.. using an ssh implementation that uses the openssl library. – barlop Sep 07 '15 at 07:01
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    @barlop As noted in the LFTP manual, FTPS support requires OpenSSL (or GNU TLS). I would guess most pre-compiled packages are linked in this way, but if you compiled it without linking to OpenSSL or GNU TLS, FTPS would presumably not be available. Regarding OpenSSH, OpenSSL provides both libssl (SSL/TLS routines) and libcrypto (hash/crypto algorithms), but OpenSSH only uses the latter. – James Sneeringer Sep 21 '15 at 14:19
  • Ah I see. LFTP does both SFTP(SSH file transfer protocol), and FTPS(SSL) and even HTTPS(SSL) – barlop Sep 21 '15 at 14:38
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With the sshfs FUSE file system you can mount an sftp-server in your local file system and then use whatever preferred tools you would use locally. I suppose most linux distros have packages for this (Debian & Ubuntu certainly do), and maybe it exists for other OS that have a FUSE implementation too.

JanC
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1

While I've never used it myself, PSFTP from the people who make putty is available here http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html. I have however used PuTTY and PSCP, both of which were easy to use.

Daniel Wright
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Good news! sftp (OpenSSH) has a build configure option to enable editline (readline history) support. I cannot possibly fathom WHY any sane person would build it without this, as it gives all the crucial features you seek (up-arrow command history, tab-completion of local and remote filenames, etc.) with zero caveats. I enabled it when I built OpenSSH 8.7p1 on my jailbroken iPad but I'm sure it works equally well anywhere.

Syclone0044
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