Getting exit status code from 'ftp' command in linux shell

Question

I need to retrive the exit status code from a command line program. No worries, I used $?. But for ftp, even if it doesn't connect, it opens the ftp shell, so I'm not able to understand that the connection haven't take place.

Try this code for understand:

#!/bin/sh

ftp 1234567
OUT=$?
if [ $OUT -eq 0 ];then
   echo "ftp OK"
else
   echo "ftp Error: "$OUT
fi

exit 0

Any help? Thanks Filippo

Answer 1

You should be looking for success message from ftp command rather than looking for a status. It's "226 Transfer complete". You can confirm it with ftp manual on your system.

200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for filename.
226 Transfer complete.
189 bytes sent in 0.145 seconds (0.8078 Kbytes/s)

Here's a sample script.

FTPLOG=/temp/ftplogfile
ftp -inv <<! > $FTPLOG
open server
user ftp pwd
put filename
close
quit
!

FTP_SUCCESS_MSG="226 Transfer complete"
if fgrep "$FTP_SUCCESS_MSG" $FTPLOG ;then
   echo "ftp OK"
else
   echo "ftp Error: "$OUT
fi
exit 0

Answer 2

If you need to download something and see if the download succeeded, why don't you use wget? It supports the FTP protocol.

It will report the status of the download with several return codes (quote from man page):

EXIT STATUS
   Wget may return one of several error codes if it encounters problems.
   0   No problems occurred.
   1   Generic error code.
   2   Parse error---for instance, when parsing command-line options, the .wgetrc or .netrc...
   3   File I/O error.
   4   Network failure.
   5   SSL verification failure.
   6   Username/password authentication failure.
   7   Protocol errors.
   8   Server issued an error response.