how to download from ftp mirrors?

vineet7kumar · 09-30-2008, 12:15 PM

HI,
Sorry if this seems stupid.
I want to know,in Linux, how to download a directory (for eg. source code of some app)from ftp mirrors? I had the difficulty downloading KDE source.

Thnaks and Regards,
Vineet

CRC123 · 09-30-2008, 12:18 PM

Well, the absolute easiest way is to use your file manager or firefox. You can type in the ftp url in a linux file manager or firefox and it should display the contents of that ftp site directory.

i92guboj · 09-30-2008, 05:05 PM

If you have the complete url with the file name included, you can download it with wget or curl from command line as well.

Code:

wget http://www.somesite.org/somefile.tar.bz2

Or even

Code:

wget ftp://somesite.org/somefile.tar.bz2

Read the wget man page for more options.

As someone said above, you can as well download it from your browser. If you need more info, provide us more info as well and links illustrating what do you exactly want to do.

linuxer8786 · 09-30-2008, 10:33 PM

what distro linux you are using?

onebuck · 10-01-2008, 12:20 AM

Hi,

You can use 'wget' as suggested. You can always copy and paste the link of the file onto the cli from the browser. Or you could just use the copy link option then use the right mouse button to paste onto the cli. Be sure to type 'wget' or the 'ftp' line and paste after that.

You should 'man wget' or 'man ftp' to get more information for the desired command.

Caighil · 10-01-2008, 12:57 AM

I use the wget method from a terminal. If you are in init 5 you can always copy the link location (make sure to copy the file and not the webpage) and paste it after the the command wget. You may need to be root though. GL

Kyle

i92guboj · 10-01-2008, 07:18 AM

Be root to download a file? That's almost sacrilege. You shouldn't be using root for anything that's not an administrative task. Downloading files certainly isn't.

You can download as many files as you wish (always into your home directory) as regular user.

Caighil · 10-01-2008, 10:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by i92guboj

Be root to download a file? That's almost sacrilege. You shouldn't be using root for anything that's not an administrative task. Downloading files certainly isn't.

You can download as many files as you wish (always into your home directory) as regular user.

A thousand apologies. I know your right. There are some times depending on what your installing that you may need to be root no? Such as compiling a LAMP server, or installing AMANDA? This may be a total misconception on my part though,and if I am wrong, it will be a lesson well learned.

chrism01 · 10-01-2008, 07:35 PM

If at any stage during an install, you need to be root, the README or equiv will (should!) let you know.

i92guboj · 10-01-2008, 11:24 PM

Well, during installation you are going to be root all the time because there's no other user. I didn't know we were talking about that concrete case.

chrism01 · 10-02-2008, 01:05 AM

Sorry, i meant installing an app, not the orig OS install

norobro · 10-02-2008, 09:41 AM

For the KDE source code, I recommend anonymous SVN. link

jgallo · 10-02-2008, 05:44 PM

SHOULD, being the operative word there

hehe

loperz7 · 10-02-2008, 06:21 PM

gftp.
your browser of choice.
download manager of choice.

And since you sound like a beginner I guess you want to install software - there are packages in the sites of some distros and there are package managers (like Synaptic) that make installing a software easy with a nice modern graphical interface (linux software evolution is: textual, DOS like graphics, modern graphics).
-apt is textual, there was another one I forgot the name of which has DOS like looks, and Synaptic.
there is also Gnome-apt but it's for gnome...so just download synaptic.

Debian