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Good SFTP Clients?
Joel Parker Henderson writes "To improve security, my company is switching servers from Microsoft to RedHat, and from FTP to SFTP. The new RedHat has SFTP-- secure FTP with SSH and host fingerprints-- and I want to upgrade our people to use it. What are good SFTP clients? Priorities: an easy user interface, point-and-click renaming of remote files and folders,
recursive directory transfers. Useful: drag-and-drop, resume broken transfers, synchronization of local and remote directories, written in Java, shareware or freeware. Thanks in advance for advice!"
MacFSTP works with classic (MacOS9) and carbon (OSX). I really like it, but it is $25 shareware from some developer in France.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
FYI, Here is OpenSSH's list of free recommended clients for interoperating with OpenSSH from Windows machines.
.. has a fine client, which includes a file-transfer function.
I use it every day to transfer files from/to home and work.
It does some of the things you mention; easy UI, remote renaming, recursive directory transfers, drag and drop and some other bits.
Caveat: I personally use psftp/pscp from the PuTTY ssh toolkit, sftp/scp under Linux or Cygwin.
;)
CuteFTP Pro claims support for SFTP and FTP over SSL.
Some of my users use it, I never have
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
One of the many wonderful things about ssh is that is provides many interfaces to the same protocol. The ssh protocol combines file transfer, remote shell access, port forwarding, encryption and compression all on one port/service. That means when you turn on the ssh port, you can access it using an interactive shell (ssh), or an interactive file transfer session (sftp) or an automated file transfer session (scp). WinSCP truthfully acts more like a GUI ftp client, but, when it comes to ssh, what's in a name?
For file synchronization, look into rdist, rsync, unison, and of course NFS, AFS, etc.
I had a flashback to my college days (mid 1990's) where FSP was starting to see wide usage for distributing files. FSP was unofficially dubbed the "Free Software Protocol", which has absolutely nothing to do with Open Source and Free Software, but the delivery of commercial software.
FSP was really appealing because no matter how many people connected to a server, 1 or 100, all the data was delivered by a single UNIX user process. This reduced the file server's profile below the radar of many sysadmins. (As compared to FTPd, which would launch a daemon for each connection and completely saturate a connection.)
You could operate a FSP server right under the nose of your university without them even wandering what is going on.
BTW: You are defining a good SFTP client as one with a GUI?
http://winscp.vse.cz/eng/
It's not really an sftp client; it uses a ssh connection to get file information on the remote host and to manipulate those files and uses scp to transfer files.
1.0 has a Norton Commander-like interface.
2.0-beta has both a NC-like and Windows Explorer-like interface.
mindterm ssh from appgate.com takes a novel approach to sftp. in addition to having a popup window that will do the sftp, you can also use the ssh client as an ftp proxy server - meaning you can use standard ftp to the ssh client, and it will then translate that into sftp to your ssh server. meaning you can have your users use whatever ftp client they like.
I'd like a plug-in for gnome-vfs that allows client apps (like Nautilus) to do sftp.
sftp://whatever would be nice.
It would also be nice if gnome-vfs could copy a file to a local temp file for editing with non-gnome-vfs apps, like nedit, or abiword, and then copy it back when it's closed, saved, etc.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
My suggestion would be to go with Vandyke's SecureFX. Vandyke is the same company that brought us the beloved SecureCRT. Plus its one of the very few Windows graphical SFTP clients. It does ftp over ssl, sftp, and normal ftp with a very simple user interface. It might be alittle pricey but if you've got the money then go for it.
If you're in a UNIX shop and still want graphical you should check out gftp, I know it also does sftp. Good luck and let us know if you find any other good ones!
Stone simple operation. Only disadvantage if you want to call it that is that it's not free. You can get a package deal from the publisher for both programs for USD 129 iirc, i think that FX by itself is something like USD 50.
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
I just grabbed Secure iXplorer. This is a GUI app that lets you browse, Windows Explorer style, your remote SFTP directory. So far I'm really impressed, might just use it as file managment for my remote machine, since it's easier to look at than a putty window.
Requires PSCP.exe and plink.exe, which are part of the PuTTY toolkit iXplorer does include these in its standard install distro.
Both are Open Source (PuTTY is MIT, iXplorer is GPL), both are really swell, and iXplorer would be good for desktop users unfamiliar with a command line.
I like music
Of course OS X has the command line sftp. For Mac OS 9 GUI there is the commercial app F-Secure (f-secure.com). For OS X GUI there is RBrowser (rbrowser.com) which supports many methods including sftp, scp and tunnelling through ssh.
Is it possible to enable SSH for shell use but disable SFTP and perhaps SCP?
A different kind of animal
Kermit has an easy interface, good resume and other nice features, it can do telnet as well as FTP; it also has the latest security stuff built in, including SSH and SRP.