Set FTP Autologin with .netrc file in Linux

There are some scenarios where we do not want to specify ftp user name and password on the ftp command line. So to automatically supply ftp username and password to the ftp client, create a file .netrc in the user’s home directory which contains the information regarding the ftp server name, ftp user & password.

We can also use .netrc file in a shell script where we will use ftp client to transfer files to remote ftp server.

Below are the steps to enable FTP autologin with the .netrc file.

Create a .netrc file in user’s home directory

# vi ~/.netrc
machine [FTP-Server-Name] login [User-Name] password [XXXXX]

For example:

machine  ftp.nstpmail.com  login ftp-user password xyz@abc123

Save & Exit the file.

Set permissions

Set permissions of the .netrc file so that only owner can readt the file:

# chmod 0600 ~/.netrc

Try Connecting FTP server

Npw you can try connecting your FTP server as shoen below:

# ftp [FTP-Server-Name]

Now above command will connect to your ftp server automatically, whereas ftp user name and password is picked up from .netrc file