There are times when sharing files using email as attachments are not possible, and then one of the best ways is to put those files in an FTP server. Of course, it is even better to put all of them in a zip file, but what if this is not possible?
So, if you have a full folder structure you need to download using some recursive download tool, you have some options, one of them is gftp which is a graphic ftp client, but here we will discuss how to do this using the command line of Linux.
Download full ftp folders recursively
Using ncftpget to recursively download files and folders from FTP
First install ncftp tools:
For Debian / Ubuntu
apt-get install ncftp For Arch Linux' pacman -Syu ncftp
or with your package manager.
Then issue this command.
ncftpget -R -v -u "username" remote-server.com /local-directory remote-directory
It will ask you for the password.
Using wget to download files, recursive mode
wget is a great tool, and it can also be used with FTP servers, and it also can download files and folders recursively.
wget -r ftp://username:password@remote-server
Or if you want to fetch the files under a particular folder:
wget -r ftp://hostname/path-to-folder/ --ftp-user=user --ftp-password=password
