Question

How to use FileZilla via console?

I was reading a tutorial on FileZilla where it was mentioned that “On Debian-based Linux distributions, like Ubuntu, you can alternatively install FileZilla using the APT package manager:”

I used the command sudo apt-get install filezilla. It appears that it was installed, so how do I use it now?

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KFSys
Site Moderator
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• April 4, 2022

Hi @aecsp2000,

what Bobby has written is perfectly valid, let me just add some suggestions. You can also use the commands rsync and scp. They are even faster than FileZilla and have a lot of options you can explore on them.

Bobby Iliev
Site Moderator
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• April 3, 2022

Hello,

I personally haven’t used Filezilla via the command line, I think that they offer a CLI version but I think that it is possible to be only available with their Pro plans:

https://filezillapro.com/docs/v3/filezilla-pro-cli/installing-filezilla-pro-command-line/

What you could do instead is to use wget to transfer files over FTP via your terminal directly:

  • Access the directory where you would like to download your files to using the cd command

  • Then initiate the transfer:

wget -mbr --user="FTP_USER@example.com" --password="YOUR_PASSWORD" "ftp://ftp.example.com/PATH_TO/YOUR_FILES/*"

The arguments:

  • -m - This option turns on recursion and time-stamping, sets infinite recursion depth and keeps FTP directory listings.
  • -b - Go to background immediately after startup. If no output file is specified via the -o, output is redirected to wget-log.
  • -r - Recursively

For more information you can check the answer here:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/how-to-recursively-copy-files-from-one-server-to-another-via-ftp-from-the-command-line

Hope that this helps!

Best,

Bobby

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