Silly question really about ftp command in bash
 

I'm trying to use the ftp command to backup a directory on a remote machine, but the ftp command 'put' complains of the source directory not being a file. I checked the ftp command list and can't seem to find a command that will 'put' a directory, is the only way to do this by making a tarball?

Furthermore, how could I use the ftp command in a bash script, for instance with mysql I would use something like "mysql -h<hostname> -u<username> -p<password>", not very secure with the password bit, but easily improved by 'paired authentication' I think it's called. Are there flags like this for the ftp command? I couldn't find any in the manual.

AFIK, you have to make it a tar/zip file to transfer.
For file transferring you can just use scp command in shell script with paired authentication between hosts.

#!/bin/sh

scp localfilename username@remotemachineip:/remotelocation


Something like that.

ok, thanks!

Check the help on 'mput' in ftp, I'm not sure whether that will help you. Maybe mput * is what you're looking for.