How to browse FTP in Vifm

Below is a tutorial on how to browse FTP servers in Vifm. It's assumed that some *nix-like operating system with support of FUSE is used. Special files described below have .ftp suffix, but it can be any other extension as well.

Alternative: CurlFtpFS

Install CurlFtpFS

Install it in whatever way you like the most, which probably depends on your operating system distribution. One can always obtain sources at the official site.

Configure Vifm to handle *.ftp files with CurlFtpFS

Sample command for vifmrc:

" FtpMount
filetype *.ftp
       \ {Mount with CurlFtpFS}
       \ FUSE_MOUNT2|curlftpfs -o ftp_port=-,,disable_eprt %PARAM %DESTINATION_DIR %CLEAR,

Let's enumerate used options of CurlFtpFS:

• ftp_port=1 - make CurlFtpFS pick the same IP address that is already used for the control connection;
• ,, is used to insert , literally as it has special meaning in the argument list of :filetype command (and :filextype);
• disable_eprt - tell CurlFtpFS to disable the use of the EPRT and LPRT commands; it's there just for better connection performance.

See man curlftpfs for other options.

Create *.ftp file

Create a file with .ftp suffix for the server you're willing to connect to. Say, it's name is server-name.ftp and content is like:

-o user=<user-name> <server-address>:

The simplest example might be:

$ cat gnu.ftp
ftp.gnu.org

Connect

In a running instance of Vifm just navigate to the .ftp-file and press l or Enter key.

Alternatively, one can pass path to .ftp-file to Vifm on command-line:

vifm gnu.ftp

which will connect to remote server on Vifm's startup.

Optimization

Remote FTP servers might be slow to respond, that's why it's a good idea to ask Vifm to reduce number of file-system queries in such directories. It can be done with the following option:

set slowfs=curlftpfs

curlftpfs here is type of FUSE file-system as it's seen in mtab. So if you use fsname=NAME option of CurlFtpFS, don't forget to use that NAME in 'slowfs' option.

Alternative: rclone

On modern systems CurlFtpFS may fail to work at all: it's unmaintained (last release in 2008) and recent versions of libcurl (8.x) cause it to abort with Error setting curl: before any connection is made. A working replacement is rclone, which provides a FUSE mount via rclone mount and a maintained FTP backend.

Install rclone

Install it through your distribution's package manager (it's widely packaged), or grab a binary from the official downloads page.

Configure Vifm to handle *.ftp files with rclone

Sample command for vifmrc:

" FtpMount
filetype *.ftp
       \ {Mount with rclone}
       \ FUSE_MOUNT2|rclone mount --daemon --vfs-cache-mode writes %PARAM %DESTINATION_DIR,

Notes on the options:

• --daemon - unlike CurlFtpFS, rclone mount does not background itself; this flag makes it fork after mounting so Vifm doesn't block;
• --vfs-cache-mode writes - enables writing/uploading and in-place edits of remote files.

See rclone mount for other options.

Create *.ftp file

With rclone the .ftp file holds an on-the-fly connection string instead of CurlFtpFS options, so no rclone.conf entry is required. The password must be obscured with rclone obscure (this also avoids problems with shell-special characters such as > in the password):

$ rclone obscure 'your-password'
KYQntueG2hkiUcmJVZqGvWbed5A9Tc9plxz2bAfBTGw

Then create server-name.ftp with a single line:

:ftp,host=<server-address>,user=<user-name>,pass=<obscured-password>:

For example:

$ cat server-name.ftp
:ftp,host=ftp.example.org,user=alice,pass=KYQntueG2hkiUcmJVZqGvWbed5A9Tc9plxz2bAfBTGw:

The trailing : selects the remote's root directory.

Security note: rclone obscure is reversible obfuscation, not encryption, so anyone who reads the file can recover the password. Protect the file accordingly:

$ chmod 600 server-name.ftp

Connect

Exactly as with CurlFtpFS: navigate to the .ftp file in a running Vifm and press l or Enter, or pass it on the command line:

vifm server-name.ftp

A harmless NOTICE: Config file ... not found - using defaults line may appear, because the connection string is used instead of an rclone config file.

Optimization

As with CurlFtpFS, remote FTP servers can be slow, so it's worth reducing the number of file-system queries. The rclone mount appears in mtab with type fuse.rclone, so use:

set slowfs=rclone