I previously wrote about Kermit for fetching remote files using a kermit
script. I found that it’s possible to achieve the same with a single kermit
command, without requiring a script file.
Given I want to download files from my remote server from the path
/home/mirror/pub and that I’ve setup a kermit server on the other part
using inetd:
File /etc/inetd.conf:
7878 stream tcp nowait solene /usr/local/bin/kermit-sshsub kermit-sshsub
I can make a ssh tunnel to it to reach it locally on port 7878 to download my files.
kermit -I -j localhost:7878 -C "remote cd /home/mirror/pub","reget /recursive .",close,EXIT
Some flags can be added to make it even faster, like -v 31 -e 9042. I insist
on kermit because it’s super reliable and there are no security issues if
running behind a firewall and accessed through ssh.
Fetching files can be stopped at any time, it supports very poor connection
too, it’s really reliable. You can also skip files, because sometimes you need
some file first and you don’t want to modify your script to fetch a specific
file (this only works if you don’t have too many files to get of course because
you can skip them only one by one).