Tag: transfer files

Hide The Output From wget

This won’t be a very complicated article and will only apply to those who want to hide the output from wget. It’s just a matter of a simple flag so that it won’t be a very long article.

You can download from the terminal. You can transfer files from the terminal. One of the tools for this is wget. There’s also curl, but this article won’t be complicated and will only apply to those who want to hide the output from wget.

This could probably be called a short, but it’s something I wanted to cover.

wget:

You probably won’t need to install wget. It’s one of those tools that you’ll find installed by default. It’s a pretty handy tool. You can verify that wget is an available application with this command:

The output should match this:

If you want to see why I’d cover such a small piece of wget, check the man page with the following command:

First, you’ll see the description of wget, which is this:

Wget – The non-interactive network downloader.

Now scroll down…

Keep scrolling…

And keep going…

There’s a whole lot to the wget command. It’s a very complicated command. If you’re a new Linux user, you will be overwhelmed by this man page. 

This is the sort of command that you can learn to use bit by bit. You don’t need to learn everything. You almost certainly don’t need everything. That doesn’t mean you can’t use it for useful tasks.

I often use the wget command. I use it not only with my Lubuntu testing but also with my regular activities. I’ll often find the URL for a file and then use wget to download the file. When I do that, it’s because I want to monitor the output.

Other times, I don’t want to monitor the output. So, for that, I use wget in quiet mode. That’s what this article is about.

Hide The Output From wget:

The wget application is an application used in the terminal. I believe there are download managers that are GUIs that use wget in the background. We’ll ignore those and use the terminal. So, press CTRL + ALT + T and let’s learn how to hide the output from wget.

The command you’re after is just the wget command with the -q flag. It would look something like this:

The thing is, this now means that you no longer see the progress. You can tell wget to keep trying until it performs as expected. That’s the ‘complete’ flag ( -c) and looks like this:

You can try this on your own with this command:

That’s a pretty small file, so it won’t take a lot of time. 

You won’t see any messages in your terminal, it will just download the file.

You can test this by running ls in your terminal after the fact. You’ll happily see that you’ve downloaded a file called ‘sort.txt’ and that it kept trying until it was completed.

So, now you know how to hide the output from wget…

Closure:

So, yeah, this probably could have been labeled a ‘short’ article, but I didn’t do so. I try to use that title for things that aren’t as involved, just a simple command in other words. This is pretty simple, but it’s also something you might use regularly.

The wget command is this hulking command with a bunch of options. Not even I fully understand all of the options and I’ve been using the application for years. There’s just a lot to it and that’s far more than we’ll ever cover and far more than most of you will ever use. Still, it can be a pretty handy command and you’ll see more of it in the future.

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Monitor rsync’s Progress

In this article, we’re going to learn how to monitor rsync’s progress. It’s a pretty trivial article, but it’s something you may want to know – especially if you’re using rsync often. Read on and learn how to monitor the progress of rsync. 

For the curious, I use rsync every day. It’s a part of what I do to beta test Lubuntu. It’s pretty handy for syncing my existing .iso with a fresh daily .iso, saving both Ubuntu and I a bunch of bandwidth.

I also use it locally. If I want to backup something like my home directory, there aren’t many better choices. Rather than mess with various applications, I can just write a simple command and can even automate it by making it a cronjob. 

However, it’s nice to get some feedback. It’s nice to see how far and how fast the syncing is taking place. It’s handy to monitor rsync’s progress. There are a couple of neat ways to do this, so I’ll show you them. 

If you don’t know, rsync is a tool used to sync files. It’s great for copying files from one location to another location. It even has some checks and balances, so it’s pretty great. By the way, the man page defines it like:

rsync – a fast, versatile, remote (and local) file-copying tool

Which I think is an apt and fair description. So, with that in mind, let’s move into the article about how to …

Monitor rsync’s Progress:

This article requires an open terminal, like many other articles on this site. If you don’t know how to open the terminal, you can do so with your keyboard – just press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open.

For the most part, rsync works like so:

Now, you can just show the progress with the -av flags. The ‘a’ for “archive” and the ‘v’ is for verbose. That is a handy command. You will also need the ‘–info=progress2’ to go along with it. 

To use it, it might look something like this (to backup sync your entire home directory in this example):

See? That’ll output the progress as you go. For local stuff, that’s pretty much my ‘go-to’ command, or close enough.

But wait, there’s more!

That’s right, there’s more to know if you want to monitor rsync’s progress!

First, install ‘progress’. It’s probably not installed by default, so you’ll have to install it manually with your own package manager. For example, with apt in Ubuntu, it’s just:

With that done, it’s a tiny application, open up another terminal window – so that rsync is still happily running in your first terminal instance, and run the following command in the second terminal:

Pretty frickin’ neat, huh? You can monitor your rsync command’s progress quite easily with that command. It gives you a pretty good readout for your rsync’s progress. If nothing else, it’ll keep you amused while your data syncs. 

Closure:

Yay! Today you have another article. I still haven’t missed a day. You’ve had an article every other day for a long time now. Well, today is no different and in this article you learning how to monitor rsync’s progress – a pretty handy tool, especially for the inquisitive. 

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Install An FTP Server With VSFTPD

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and is still a useful, if less secure, and quick way to transfer files from one computer to another. If you’ve enabled SSH, then SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) is likely available and it’s truly a better option than FTP. If SFTP is an option, you should probably use it.

There are still people who prefer FTP and situations where FTP makes sense. I actually use it to transfer files around my home network with some regularity. Not only does it let me transfer files, I can also use the FTP application to do things like rename files, copy and move files, and even change file permissions. It’s more about the application at that point, I suppose. Of course, most FTP clients handle SFTP just fine these days.

FTP isn’t all that secure and, again, SFTP is likely a better option in every way, but VSFTPD is “VS” – meaning “Very Secure.” I mean, that’s what they claim – and they do have some security configuration options. So, it has that going for it.

Either way, this article is gonna tell you how to install it. What you do with that information is entirely up to you! If you do eventually want to use this information, there are a couple of previous articles that might suit your needs.

You might need to know about hostnames. Click here.
You may wish to know your IP address. Click here.

With that information read and at hand, let’s jump into installing VSFTPD!

Enable FTP with VSFTPD:

The reason I picked VSFTPD for this is because it’s pretty much universally available. It’s there for all the major distros, readily available in your default repositories. We’re not going to get deep into any configuration options, nor are we even going to discuss securing it. We’re simply going to install it and let you loose on the world!

To that end, why don’t we crack open our terminal? To do that, you can just use your keyboard – press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open. 

With that step done, let’s go ahead and install it:

Debian/Ubuntu:

Fedora/RHEL:

SEL/OpenSUSE:

Arch/Manjaro:

One of those should do the trick for the major distros. As much as I’d like to just leave it there, that’s not quite enough. I’ll also let you know that your configuration is largely done in  /etc/vsftpd.conf and you can use man vsftpd.conf to learn about configuring your new FTP server.

For the configuration basics, you’ll want to enable writing to the server (so that you can change files, including uploading them) and you’ll likely want to enable local access. Like other configuration files, you may need to remove the # from the start of the lines in order for them to be read and take effect. To comment out lines, you just add a # to the start of the line and the line will be ignored.

You can use nano, vim, or any plain text editor you want to edit the files. However, changes won’t take effect until after you restart the FTP server’s daemon. To do that, you use this command:

With this done, you can connect to your FTP server by using the hostname or the IP address, internal or external. There are links at the first section of the article that tell you how to find that information, though the site’s search works just fine. See? I actually DID have a reason for posting those!

Again, SFTP is a much better option. I actually plan on doing an article about SFTP, but that article requires linking to this sort of article and so I might as well write it first!

Closure:

And there you have it… Yet another article in the books. If you’d like to do a guest article, you can just write it and I’ll do the rest! Every other day as a publishing schedule isn’t too bad, but a break would be fun. Either way, enjoy your new FTP server and good luck!

Thanks for reading! If you want to help, or if the site has helped you, you can donate, register to help, write an article, or buy inexpensive hosting to start your own site. If you scroll down, you can sign up for the newsletter, vote for the article, and comment.

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