Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi Monks!

I have a 1.5G video file that I am trying to upload to my hosting account. I tried two ftp programs and both can't handle large files I guess, they just lose connection and the file never gets there. My idea is to use Perl to FTP this file or if someone have a suggestion on how to FTP large files to a server.

Thanks for the Help!!!!

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: FTP wtih Perl
by liverpole (Monsignor) on Nov 22, 2006 at 13:43 UTC
    One option is to use Net::FTP, and specifically set the Timeout value (see the section in the documentation titled CONSTRUCTOR).

    It's possible that you may not be able to transfer such a huge file all at once, in which case another option is to split it into multiple pieces, and reassemble it at the other end (assuming you have login or ssh capabilities at the remote end).  If that's an option, look at the Unix split command.

    s''(q.S:$/9=(T1';s;(..)(..);$..=substr+crypt($1,$2),2,3;eg;print$..$/
[reply]
Re: FTP wtih Perl
by Anonymous Monk on Nov 22, 2006 at 13:39 UTC
    Net::FTP should be able to handle 1.5G files. But the problem may be elsewhere; does the server accept such large files and/or long transmissions? Do you have a file quotum that allows 1.5Gb files? Note also that many ftp programs can deal with resuming transmissions.
[reply]
Re: FTP wtih Perl
by Cabrion (Friar) on Nov 22, 2006 at 14:29 UTC
    Most modern FTP servers/clients have the ability to restart uploads at a given byte position in the file. Check your manuals.
[reply]
Re: FTP wtih Perl
by zentara (Cardinal) on Nov 22, 2006 at 14:47 UTC
    You might like to watch the progress. See Tk and FTP with progress bars., it could be converted to upload. Also there is curl which is an interface to libcurl

    You can setup a curl transfer to have a callback for every chunk transferred. There are a few tutorials on the net and at the libcurl homepage.

    I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. Cogito ergo sum a bum
[reply]
Re: FTP wtih Perl
by DigitalKitty (Parson) on Nov 23, 2006 at 05:39 UTC
    Hi Anonymous Monk.

    I agree with the other monks in that perl should be fully capable of receiving/transferring a 1.5G file. If an issue arises, it might be on the ISP side. The following code is untested and was modelled on the perldoc example. 

    #!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Net::FTP;

my $ftp;

$ftp = Net::FTP->new("my_host", Timeout=>240, Debug => 0)
or die "Error: $@";

$ftp->login('id','password')
or die "Error: ", $ftp->message;

$ftp->cwd("/folder")
or die "Error with cwd command: ", $ftp->message;

$ftp->put('filename to transfer', 'filename it will be called on the r
+emote server') or die "Error in transfer: ", $ftp->message;

$ftp->quit;

    [download]


    Additional information can be found at: http://perldoc.perl.org/Net/FTP.html.

    Hope this helps,
    ~Katie
[reply]
[d/l]
Re: FTP wtih Perl
by jhourcle (Prior) on Nov 22, 2006 at 16:34 UTC

    Are you sure it's an issue with the client?

    Do other binary files of a smaller size get there?

    If no data is getting there (0 byte file created), then it's likely an issue with needing to use passive FTP. If no file is created on the remote host, it could be any of a number of issues (authentication, permissions), but you should've seen an error message.

    If the file is getting partially written, it could be a few different things -- disk quotas (possible), the link losing sync due to an excessive run of 0s (very unlikely, but can happen under some signaling standards over T1s), the connection dropping due to flow control commands (unlikely, unless you're coming over a modem using software flow control ... but you wouldn't be pushing 1.5GB over that)

    ...

    Anyway, I don't think this is the problem you think it is, and I'd suggest you contact the helpdesk of your hosting provider.

[reply]
Re: FTP wtih Perl
by salva (Canon) on Nov 22, 2006 at 14:28 UTC
[reply]

Back to Seekers of Perl Wisdom