Using filezilla and wget to transfer files from personal to lab machines

This page is aimed particularly at students who are having difficulties transferring files directly from their personal machines to hyper using: (1) filezilla and/or (2) pscp (from the putty package) on Windows, scp on Max OSX or Linux

Important notes

• Be sure to use ftp, not sftp, when connecting to laplace (my research group's

• Be sure to transfer files to laplace only to your personal upload directory

• When using wget, note that if you are downloading a file with the same name as a file that already exists in the working directory, wget will add a .1 (then .2, .3, etc.) to the name. It is thus best to (carefully) rename or erase the existing file before issuing the wget command.

First install filezilla

• Follow the instructions HERE

Step 1. Use filezilla to transfer files from personal machine(s) to laplace.phas.ubc.ca

• On your personal machine, open filezilla and make a connection as follows:

  • From the menu bar select:

    Transfer -> Transfer Type -> binary
    

  • In the type-ins:

    Host:     ftp://laplace.phas.ubc.ca 
    Username: anonymous
    Password: (leave empty)
    

  • Click Quickconnect

  • After the connection is established, carefully navigate to the following remote folder (via right pane of filezilla)

    upload -> <your login>
    

  • Now, from the left pane of filezilla, browse to the local folder containing the file(s) you wish to transfer

  • Transfer the files to the remote host (laplace) using drag-and-drop or by double clicking on icons

Step 2. Option 1: Use wget to transfer files from laplace to lab machines

• You do not need to be in the lab to do this.

• All that is required is that you have a terminal session running on hyper (using, e.g., putty)

• In a terminal session on hyper (if you are working remotely) or on one of the lab machines (if you are in the lab), change the working directory to where you want to copy the files. For example

  % cd /phys210/phys210d/public_html
  

• Use the wget command to retrieve the file from laplace. In this case, I will assume that I have stored an image file feynman.jpg in upload/phys210d as per the instructions above:

  % wget ftp://laplace/upload/phys210d/feynman.jpg
  % ls
  feynman.jpg  index.html
  

  You should, of course, replace phys210d with your account name, and feynman.jpg with the appropriate filename.

Step 2. Option 2: Use filezilla to transfer file from laplace to lab machines

• You do need to be in the lab to do this.

• In a desktop session on one on the lab machines, start filezilla, make a connection to laplace as in Step 1 above (using anonymous login), and transfer the files from laplace to your desired folder on the lab machines.