FTP

At a glance

Capability	Support
rclone support tier	Tier 1: Core
Checksums	None
Modification times	Kept, to 1 s
Case-insensitive names	No
Duplicate names allowed	No
Server-side copy	No
Server-side move and rename	Yes
Folder move and rename	Yes, in one step
Free space reporting	No
Empty folders	Yes
Change notifications	No
Uploads of unknown size	Yes
Public links	No

FTP is the File Transfer Protocol. Rclone FTP support is provided using the github.com/jlaffaye/ftp package.

Limitations of Rclone’s FTP backend

a / it is relative to the home directory of the user. An empty path remote: refers to the user’s home directory.

Setup notes

In CloudMount you add this drive from the Add drive screen, and the wizard asks for the options listed under Options. The notes below come from rclone’s setup guide.

Anonymous FTP

When connecting to a FTP server that allows anonymous login, you can use the special “anonymous” username. Traditionally, this user account accepts any string as a password, although it is common to use either the password “anonymous” or “guest”. Some servers require the use of a valid e-mail address as password.

Using on-the-fly or connection string remotes makes it easy to access such servers, without requiring any configuration in advance. The following are examples of that:

rclone lsf :ftp: --ftp-host=speedtest.tele2.net --ftp-user=anonymous --ftp-pass=$(rclone obscure dummy)
rclone lsf :ftp,host=speedtest.tele2.net,user=anonymous,pass=$(rclone obscure dummy):

The above examples work in Linux shells and in PowerShell, but not Windows Command Prompt. They execute the rclone obscure command to create a password string in the format required by the pass option. The following examples are exactly the same, except use an already obscured string representation of the same password “dummy”, and therefore works even in Windows Command Prompt:

rclone lsf :ftp: --ftp-host=speedtest.tele2.net --ftp-user=anonymous --ftp-pass=IXs2wc8OJOz7SYLBk47Ji1rHTmxM
rclone lsf :ftp,host=speedtest.tele2.net,user=anonymous,pass=IXs2wc8OJOz7SYLBk47Ji1rHTmxM:

Implicit TLS

Rlone FTP supports implicit FTP over TLS servers (FTPS). This has to be enabled in the FTP backend config for the remote, or with --ftp-tls. The default FTPS port is 990, not 21 and can be set with --ftp-port.

TLS Options

TLS options for Implicit and Explicit TLS can be set using the following flags which are specific to the FTP backend:

--ftp-no-check-certificate     Do not verify the TLS certificate of the server
--ftp-disable-tls13            Disable TLS 1.3 (workaround for FTP servers with buggy TLS)
--ftp-tls-cache-size int       Size of TLS session cache for all control and data connections (default 32)

However any of the global TLS flags can also be used such as:

--ca-cert stringArray          CA certificate used to verify servers
--client-cert string           Client SSL certificate (PEM) for mutual TLS auth
--client-key string            Client SSL private key (PEM) for mutual TLS auth
--no-check-certificate         Do not verify the server SSL certificate (insecure)

If these need to be put in the config file so they apply to just the FTP backend then use the override syntax, eg

override.ca_cert = XXX
override.client_cert = XXX
override.client_key = XXX

Restricted filename characters

In addition to the default restricted characters set the following characters are also replaced:

File names cannot end with the following characters. Replacement is limited to the last character in a file name:

Character	Value	Replacement
SP	0x20	␠

Not all FTP servers can have all characters in file names, for example:

FTP Server	Forbidden characters
proftpd	`*`
pureftpd	`\ [ ]`

This backend’s interactive configuration wizard provides a selection of sensible encoding settings for major FTP servers: ProFTPd, PureFTPd, VsFTPd. Just hit a selection number when prompted.

Options

Standard options

The wizard asks for these when you add the drive.

host

FTP host to connect to.

E.g. “ftp.example.com”.

Type: string · Required

user

FTP username.

Type: string · Default: $USER

port

FTP port number.

Type: int · Default: 21

pass

FTP password.

NB Input to this must be obscured - see rclone obscure.

Type: string

tls

Use Implicit FTPS (FTP over TLS).

When using implicit FTP over TLS the client connects using TLS right from the start which breaks compatibility with non-TLS-aware servers. This is usually served over port 990 rather than port 21. Cannot be used in combination with explicit FTPS.

Type: bool · Default: false

explicit_tls

Use Explicit FTPS (FTP over TLS).

When using explicit FTP over TLS the client explicitly requests security from the server in order to upgrade a plain text connection to an encrypted one. Cannot be used in combination with implicit FTPS.

Type: bool · Default: false

Advanced options

The wizard shows these under Advanced options. Most drives work without changing any of them.

concurrency

Maximum number of FTP simultaneous connections, 0 for unlimited.

Note that setting this is very likely to cause deadlocks so it should be used with care.

If you are doing a sync or copy then make sure concurrency is one more than the sum of --transfers and --checkers.

If you use --check-first then it just needs to be one more than the maximum of --checkers and --transfers.

So for concurrency 3 you’d use --checkers 2 --transfers 2 --check-first or --checkers 1 --transfers 1.

Type: int · Default: 0

no_check_certificate

Do not verify the TLS certificate of the server.

Type: bool · Default: false

disable_epsv

Disable using EPSV even if server advertises support.

Type: bool · Default: false

disable_mlsd

Disable using MLSD even if server advertises support.

Type: bool · Default: false

disable_utf8

Disable using UTF-8 even if server advertises support.

Type: bool · Default: false

writing_mdtm

Use MDTM to set modification time (VsFtpd quirk)

Type: bool · Default: false

force_list_hidden

Use LIST -a to force listing of hidden files and folders. This will disable the use of MLSD.

Type: bool · Default: false

idle_timeout

Max time before closing idle connections.

If no connections have been returned to the connection pool in the time given, rclone will empty the connection pool.

Set to 0 to keep connections indefinitely.

Type: Duration · Default: 1m0s

close_timeout

Maximum time to wait for a response to close.

Type: Duration · Default: 1m0s

tls_cache_size

Size of TLS session cache for all control and data connections.

TLS cache allows to resume TLS sessions and reuse PSK between connections. Increase if default size is not enough resulting in TLS resumption errors. Enabled by default. Use 0 to disable.

Type: int · Default: 32

disable_tls13

Disable TLS 1.3 (workaround for FTP servers with buggy TLS)

Type: bool · Default: false

allow_insecure_tls_ciphers

Allow insecure TLS ciphers

Setting this flag will allow the usage of the following TLS ciphers in addition to the secure defaults:

TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256

Type: bool · Default: false

shut_timeout

Maximum time to wait for data connection closing status.

Type: Duration · Default: 1m0s

ask_password

Allow asking for FTP password when needed.

If this is set and no password is supplied then rclone will ask for a password

Type: bool · Default: false

socks_proxy

Socks 5 proxy host.

Supports the format user:pass@host:port, user@host:port, host:port.

Example:

myUser:myPass@localhost:9005

Type: string

http_proxy

URL for HTTP CONNECT proxy

Set this to a URL for an HTTP proxy which supports the HTTP CONNECT verb.

Supports the format http://user:pass@host:port, http://host:port, http://host.

Example:

http://myUser:myPass@proxyhostname.example.com:8000

Type: string

no_check_upload

Don’t check the upload is OK

Normally rclone will try to check the upload exists after it has uploaded a file to make sure the size and modification time are as expected.

This flag stops rclone doing these checks. This enables uploading to folders which are write only.

You will likely need to use the –inplace flag also if uploading to a write only folder.

Type: bool · Default: false

encoding

The encoding for the backend.

See the encoding section in the overview for more info.

Type: Encoding · Default: Slash,Del,Ctl,RightSpace,Dot

Choices:

Asterisk,Ctl,Dot,Slash: ProFTPd can’t handle ‘*’ in file names
BackSlash,Ctl,Del,Dot,RightSpace,Slash,SquareBracket: PureFTPd can’t handle ‘[]’ or ‘*’ in file names
Ctl,LeftPeriod,Slash: VsFTPd can’t handle file names starting with dot

description

Description of the remote.

Type: string

Limitations

FTP servers acting as rclone remotes must support passive mode. The mode cannot be configured as passive is the only supported one. Rclone’s FTP implementation is not compatible with active mode as the library it uses doesn’t support it. This will likely never be supported due to security concerns.

Rclone’s FTP backend does not support any checksums but can compare file sizes.

rclone about is not supported by the FTP backend. Backends without this capability cannot determine free space for an rclone mount or use policy mfs (most free space) as a member of an rclone union remote.

See List of backends that do not support rclone about and rclone about.

The implementation of : --dump headers, --dump bodies, --dump auth for debugging isn’t the same as for rclone HTTP based backends - it has less fine grained control.

--timeout isn’t supported (but --contimeout is).

--bind isn’t supported.

Rclone’s FTP backend could support server-side move but does not at present.

The ftp_proxy environment variable is not currently supported.

Modification times

File modification time (timestamps) is supported to 1 second resolution for major FTP servers: ProFTPd, PureFTPd, VsFTPd, and FileZilla FTP server. The VsFTPd server has non-standard implementation of time related protocol commands and needs a special configuration setting: writing_mdtm = true.

Support for precise file time with other FTP servers varies depending on what protocol extensions they advertise. If all the MLSD, MDTM and MFTM extensions are present, rclone will use them together to provide precise time. Otherwise the times you see on the FTP server through rclone are those of the last file upload.

You can use the following command to check whether rclone can use precise time with your FTP server: rclone backend features your_ftp_remote: (the trailing colon is important). Look for the number in the line tagged by Precision designating the remote time precision expressed as nanoseconds. A value of 1000000000 means that file time precision of 1 second is available. A value of 3153600000000000000 (or another large number) means “unsupported”.