Secure FTP

on osX

/usr/bin/sftp

easy!

sure. i have a unix weenie background so forget others don't 🙂

so fire up terminal.app (to get the unix command line) and sftp should just work if you type it. you'll probably want to do 'man sftp' to see how it works first tho.

hope that helps

Open up Applications->Utilities->Terminal.

In it, type:
and hit return - that will explain sftp (keep hitting the spacebar to scroll through the explanation - 'man' means "manual" - or type 'q' at any time to exit the explanation).

Then, when ready to use it, again within Terminal, just type, as explained above:
or more simply, since your system almost undoubtedly has only one 'sftp' app:
Of course, you'll be copying something, so the way to do that would be, for example, something like this:
or, as a dummy example with user 'bob' (on the system you're copying from), computer '192.168.1.103' (the computer you're copying from - you don't need to use an IP address as long as the computer 'name' is known to your system, so you could, for example, use 'CorpMacServer' or whatever) and file (on other computer) named /Users/bob/sample.pdf being copied to the same name locally, you'd say:

Ignore the underlining above - it's just vBulletin (the software used by this forum) thinking it's an email address.

That final '.' above just means "to here". In other words, "copy that file to this directory, please."

You'll be asked for a password and if you want to connect - just enter the appropriate responses.

thanks jsw...that's what i meant to say 🙂

indifference said:

hey OK, I am at college, but I am off campus. Do I have to be on campus to access their network? It is set to the preferances of the colleges network right?

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You absolutely need to be able to access the campus network to be able to reach the computer you're trying to copy from. Whether or not you can access from off campus is up to the school, but I would imagine that you can get to the computers remotely.

indifference said:

To get Secure FTP, for the mac, how can you get a copy of it without paying for it? I found one on version tracker but the problem was it is only a 30 license.

Click to expand...

There are free graphical SFTP/SCP front-ends available for OS X.

Fugu is very stable. It has the shortcoming that it won't recurse through directories - so if you're moving several levels of files back and forth it can be annoying.

Cyberduck doesn't have Fugu's limitation in that regard, but hasn't always been stable in my experience. I would use Cyberduck exclusively... if it didn't crash every once in a while. 😀

Also if you are more adventurous, you can install fink and get my absolute favorite SFTP program, gftp. It has the significant downside that it doesn't use the native Apple interface, though. I'd love to see a current port of it to OS X.

BTW just in case someone wants to point this out to me: 😉 I'm aware that the SFTP protocol doesn't support directory recursion in and of itself - but programmers can find ways to implement it.