Re: FTP MGET differences

Hello Art,

> He tries and MGET *.* from his FTP Client, and it asks him to confirm
> each file name with a "Y" or "N"
[SNIP]
> Is there a setting I can change on Iseries FTP Server to stop that?
> My awesome customer can't change his script at all.

What you're seeing when it asks the user to confirm each file has NOTHING
WHATSOEVER to do with the server. It's entirely part of the user
interface.

You see, when you use an FTP client, you're not directly interacting with
the server. (Though, if you turn on debugging in the FTP client, it'll
show you the commands it's sending to the server)

The FTP server has no notion of an "mget" command.  When you type MGET,
what happens is, the FTP client asks the server for a list of files in the
directory. After receiving that list, the FTP client cycles through the
files one by one and requests each file individually from the server.

Some clients, as you've noted, will ask the user if they're sure for each
file.  Some won't.  In any case, it has nothing to do with the server,
it's purely a conversation between the client and his user.

Most of the time, you can turn this off in the FTP client by specifying
"prompt off" or toggle it by saying "prompt".  That will prevent the FTP
client from asking -- but of course, it would require a small modification
to the script.  Something you said you couldn't do --- which is a bit
frustrating, since the problem is that the script was written incorrectly!

Sometimes you can include a switch to FTP when you run it that will turn
off interactive prompting.  In Windows XP, that switch is -i, so you'd do:

    ftp -i -s:myscript

Then it won't ask for each file.

But, in any case, there's nothing you can do from the server side, it has
no concept of it... only the client can be changed.