FTPFS refers to file systems that support access to a

File Transfer Protocol The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...

(FTP) server through standard file system

application programming interface An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how t ...

s (APIs). The ftpfs command in Plan 9 was originated by

Dennis Ritchie Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (September 9, 1941 – October 12, 2011) was an American computer scientist. He is most well-known for creating the C programming language and, with long-time colleague Ken Thompson, the Unix operating system and B p ...

and was included in the first release of the system (1992). It arranged for a remote file system reachable via FTP to appear as part of the local file system. In

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

systems, FTPFS was initially implemented as a

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ope ...

module that allows the user to mount a

FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...

server onto the local filesystem but it was never seen as the perfect way to do it. By 2003, it has been converted to use LUFS, and later to

FUSE Fuse or FUSE may refer to: Devices * Fuse (electrical), a device used in electrical systems to protect against excessive current ** Fuse (automotive), a class of fuses for vehicles * Fuse (hydraulic), a device used in hydraulic systems to protect ...

. Now it is called CurlFtpFS because it uses the universal

libcurl cURL (pronounced like "curl", UK: , US: ) is a computer software project providing a library (libcurl) and command-line tool (curl) for transferring data using various network protocols. The name stands for "Client URL". History cURL was fi ...

for FTP transactions and is becoming part of the major

Linux distribution A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...

s. There also exists LftpFS for smart mirroring of FTP sites. In

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

, a read-only FTP file system is included that can be used either via the GUI (with ) or the command line (mount_ftp). The read-only limitation is noted in the man page for mount_ftp (on a macOS system, in Terminal.app, see "man mount_ftp"). However, the free application Macfusion includes a working implementation of FTPFS. Additionally, macOS Fuse is reported to enable this but the method to do so is undocumented (as of March 4, 2013) either via various obvious man page (e.g. sshfs) or in the macOS Fuse wiki. For

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...

and other

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

operating systems, this functionality is partially provided by the "Network Places"/"Network Location" shell facility; a network place is a link to either an FTP server or a

WebDAV WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) is a set of extensions to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which allows user agents to collaboratively author contents ''directly'' in an HTTP web server by providing facilities for concu ...

server and can be accessed in

Windows Explorer File Explorer, previously known as Windows Explorer, is a file manager application that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user interface for accessing the file ...

as just another network filesystem. This does not provide transparent access through the lowest-level

Win32 The Windows API, informally WinAPI, is Microsoft's core set of application programming interfaces (APIs) available in the Microsoft Windows operating systems. The name Windows API collectively refers to several different platform implementations th ...

file system APIs, however. Such functionality can be provided by third party programs such as

WebDrive WebDrive is a drive mapping utility that supports accessing remote file servers using open FTP, FTPS, SFTP, and WebDAV protocols, and proprietary or vendor-specific protocols. It can be run as a Windows service and supports automatic mounting o ...

and FTPDrive.

References

External links

*
LftpFS
* http://macfusionapp.org File Transfer Protocol Computer_file_systems {{Network-software-stub

See also

References

External links