ftp

[Kathy Young]

I have one AIX system that creates reports. I need to be able to transport those files to the interface engine (also AIX) once a day. Is there an easy way to create an ftp script and call it from a cron tab? Is there an easier way?

Topic

[James Cobane]

Kathy,

You could use the fileset-ftp protocol to perform the ftp for you, and depending on what version of Cloverleaf you are running, utilize the ‘Advanced Scheduling’ option (I think there are some known issues with the “Advanced Scheduling” option prior to 5.3, but you can check with Support on that).  In lieu of the ‘Advanced Scheduler’ option, you could set a an entry in cron to start/stop the thread at the desired times or you could also control the start/stop of the thread via an Alert (with an ‘exec’ action) using the “Time Window” functions there.  Just some other ways to “skin a cat”.

Jim Cobane

Henry Ford Health

P.S.  Just remember that the fileset-ftp protocol will delete the sourcefile after it processes it (unless you tell it to do otherwise with a ‘Deletion’ tps)

[William Grow]

I just finished setting up an inbound ftp thread using advanced scheduling. There were a couple of surprises for me. One was that I needed to use a tps directory parse script to parse out subdirectories from the inbound list of files to grab. Without the directory parse script the engine tries to grab everything including subdirectories. When it can’t grab the subdirectory (not a file) it tosses an error in the process log file.  The second is that despite the advanced scheduling if I bounce the process the ftp thread on startup goes to the server and looks for a file to grab.  The thread is very stable.  A third surprise is a temp log file that the ftp fileset protocol places in the process directory.  The file is read/write/execute locked so it was causing backups to fail until the backup was changed to exclude this file. Other than this I like the thread it is reliable and it allows me to create the same smat files that my other threads are creating.  I even changed the standard directory parse script to add entries into the process log file to indicate what files were found in the directory and which files it would try to parse for messages adding the date time to these messages.

[B Pariyesana]

Beware when you’re using Advance Scheduling in 5.3. Cloverleaf stops scheduling next scan if it receives file lock error during scanning the directory. It doesn’t report the error to the console too

B. Pariyesana

MedStar Health

[Steve Carter]

If you just need to FTP files in a particular directory to another spot on another system, a simple FTP script would do the job.  If you have the FTP package for Tcl, it’s very simple.

ftp::Open – opens the connection

ftp::Cd – change directory if needed

ftp::Put – push the file

ftp::Close – close the connection

I have done quite a bit with the FTP package and find it very easy to use.

Let me know if you need more specifics.

Steve

[David Harrison]

Steve,

Sounds interesting to me. I’m on Cloverleaf 5.2 on Solaris and I don’t have the ftp commands in hcitcl. I’ve found that tcllib 1.7 has them but are there any caveats to loading and using these on my Cloverleaf box?

Dave

[Bill Bertera]

The tcllib ftp commands are much more useful and stable than the Fileset/FTP protocol. I would recommend those wherever possible…

[Steve Carter]

Unfortunately, I don’t know the details for installation.  It was already out there when I needed it.

Steve

[Author]

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