Linux: How to Detect That Ftp File Upload Is Finished

LINUX: how to detect that ftp file upload is finished

I'd try using inotify, event code IN_CLOSE_WRITE.

How to detect that a file is being uploaded over FTP

There's no generic solution to this problem.

Some FTP servers lock the file being uploaded, preventing you from accessing it, while the file is still being uploaded. For example IIS FTP server does that. Most other FTP servers do not. See my answer at Prevent file from being accessed as it's being uploaded.

---

There are some common workarounds to the problem (originally posted in SFTP file lock mechanism, but relevant for the FTP too):

• You can have the client upload a "done" file once the upload finishes. Make your automated system wait for the "done" file to appear.

• You can have a dedicated "upload" folder and have the client (atomically) move the uploaded file to a "done" folder. Make your automated system look to the "done" folder only.

• Have a file naming convention for files being uploaded (".filepart") and have the client (atomically) rename the file after upload to its final name. Make your automated system ignore the ".filepart" files.

  See (my) article Locking files while uploading / Upload to temporary file name for an example of implementing this approach.

  Also, some FTP servers have this functionality built-in. For example ProFTPD with its HiddenStores directive.

• A gross hack is to periodically check for file attributes (size and time) and consider the upload finished, if the attributes have not changed for some time interval.

• You can also make use of the fact that some file formats have clear end-of-the-file marker (like XML or ZIP). So you know, that the file is incomplete.

---

Some FTP servers allow you to configure a hook to be called, when an upload is finished. You can make use of that. For example ProFTPD has a mod_exec module (see the ExecOnCommand directive).

How to know if file is complete on the server using FTP?

This is a very old and well-known problem.

There is no way to be absolutely certain a file being written by the FTP daemon is complete. It's even possible that the file transfer failed and then gets restarted and completed. You must poll the file's size and set a time limit, say 5 minutes. If the size does not change during that time you assume the file is complete.

If possible, the program that processes the file should be able to deal with partial files.

A much better alternative is rsync, which is much more robust and deterministic. It can even be configured (via command-line option) to write the data initially to a temporary location and move it to its final destination path upon successful completion. If the file exists where you expect it, then it is by definition complete.

FTP: How to know if a file on remote ftp server is complete

I use ftputil to implement this work-around:

1. connect to ftp server
2. list all files of the directory
3. call stat() on each file
4. wait N seconds
5. For each file: call stat() again. If result is different, then skip this file, since it was modified during the last seconds.
6. If stat() result is not different, then download the file.

This whole ftp-fetching is old and obsolete technology. I hope that the customer will use a modern http API the next time :-)

Detect SFTP file upload completed

For problem 1) you can use the inotify API to watch the directory for changes. You don't say which programming language you use. In Perl you would use Linux::Inotify, in Python pynotify.

For problem 2), one way is to wait until the ssh session disconnects, another is to also use inotify to watch for file close notifications.

How to detect whether file uploaded by FTP

make a file checker.sh , and run it in background ./checker.sh /dev/null 2>&1 & , or run it in screen

#!/bin/bash

COUNTER=0
while [  $COUNTER -lt 99999 ]; do

if [ -f "/path/to/your/file" ]; then
    #do action here ,run a  script a program etc #the file is there
fi

sleep 5
let COUNTER=COUNTER+1 

done

Check status of ftp file transfer in python

I actually found a solution. I'm using proftpd in Ubuntu, and it have a configuration when can add a sufix and/or prefix to the filename when is still on transfer, and then rename it to the original name.

I just had to ignore all file with the prefix or sufix. With this I guarantee that I open the file when is complete.

How to determine whether a file is still being transferred via ftp

Our server admin suggested ftpwho, which outputs which files are currently transferred.

http://www.castaglia.org/proftpd/doc/ftpwho.html

So the solution is to parse the output of ftpwho to see if a file in the directory is being transferred.

---

Related Topics