FTP with Resume

January 4th, 2009 Category: General, Linux Server

You often transfer huge files over FTP and are annoyed because the connection is sometimes interrupted and file transfer starts from zero? Especially when transferring over a mobile connection with UMTS/HSDPA this might get really really annoying.

To avoid this resume/restart should be enabled in your FTP server, in my case this is proftpd running on Debian Etch. To do this add the following two lines in /etc/proftpd/modules.conf:

AllowStoreRestart on
AllowRetrieveRestart on

And restart proftpd “/etc/init.d/proftpd restart”.

Next we need a FTP client which supports resume/restart. I found CoreFTP for Windows is doing a good job here. It remembers every file transfer in a queue so no downloads are lost after a disconnect of your connection. Also it resumes the transfer.

And: The Core FTP Lite version is free for personal, educational and evaluation use.