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Re: [gftp] WinSCP with gFTP?



Dr. Scott S. Jones wrote:
I work with a designer who uses gFTP for her ftp site. I run windows xp and
linux and would like to use WinSCP to transfer files to and from this
designer's FTP site.


Can I use WinSCP to do this?

gFTP and WinSCP are both file-transfer clients, so they don't have to be compatible with each other per se. Whether you can use WinSCP depends on what kind of file-transfer software is running on the server. It's usually either an FTP server program or an SCP/SFTP server program (or both). gFTP can access both, but WinSCP can only access the latter, so if the server is only running the FTP protocol, then you won't be able to use WinSCP to access it.


It's easy to tell whether the server is running SCP/SFTP software; just try to log in to it using WinSCP. The port is 22, whereas the FTP protocol uses port 23, so it's easy to tell the difference. (Of course the server admin can run the software on whatever port he/she wants, but those are the defaults, and in any case the client won't connect if it's the wrong protocol/port.)

If the server isn't running SCP/SFTP software, and you're stuck with having to access it via FTP instead, there is a Windows client called SmartFTP that I think is really good, and it's free for non-comm/non-profits.

If it's at all possible to convince the server admin to run SCP/SFTP instead of FTP, that would be highly preferable, since FTP is insecure (sends passwords via plaintext, etc), whereas SCP/SFTP is fully encrypted.

Hope this helps,
Anthony DiSante
http://encodable.com/
http://nodivisions.com/