In FTP, can I specify a remote directory using `~username` syntax?

Question

I know the ftp username, password, and directory of the source.

I just want to download the whole thing to a new server.

Simple download.

The username is not root. So I wonder how I would specify the directory name? Should I give the /home/username/public_html or should I give it as ~username/public_html

Answer 1

wget

Use wget as follow

wget --mirror --no-parent --user=<ftpuser> --password=<ftppassword> ftp://server/<directory path>

It will download the whole directory recursively.

Option --no-parent

Do not ever ascend to the parent directory when retrieving recursively. This is a useful option, since it guarantees that only the files below a certain hierarchy will be downloaded.

So the following

wget --mirror --no-parent --user=<ftpuser> --password=<ftppassword> ftp://server/home/username/public_html

will only download directory structure starting with public_html.

Directory path

You should login ftp server once to confirm the path. Depending on how ftp server is configure, the path may actually start within the home directory. In that case, the directory path will be /public_html only.

Changing Directory Ownership

Change the user and group of the downloaded directory with following command

chown -R <user>:<group> public_html

If you want to change to user www-data and group www-data

chown -R www-data:www-data public_html

You may also want to remove write permission for others/anybody

chmod -R o-w public_html

-R = recursively

Category (can assign multiple without space)
u = user
g = group
o = others = anybody

Add/Remove
"-" sign = remove permission following the sign, from category before the sign
"+" sign = add permission following the sign, to category before the sign

Permission (can assign multiple without space)
r = read permission
w = write permission
x = execute permission

Example
ug+w = add write permission to user and group
ugo-wx = remove write and execute permission from user, group and others

Answer 2

prompt
mget ~/public_html

This should download everything from /home/username/public_html directory.