Good SFTP Clients?

Joel Parker Henderson writes "To improve security, my company is switching servers from Microsoft to RedHat, and from FTP to SFTP. The new RedHat has SFTP-- secure FTP with SSH and host fingerprints-- and I want to upgrade our people to use it. What are good SFTP clients? Priorities: an easy user interface, point-and-click renaming of remote files and folders, recursive directory transfers. Useful: drag-and-drop, resume broken transfers, synchronization of local and remote directories, written in Java, shareware or freeware. Thanks in advance for advice!"

MacSFTP is nice for Mac OS X (but $25 shareware)

[ubiquitin]

MacFSTP [macsftp.com] works with classic (MacOS9) and carbon (OSX). I really like it, but it is $25 shareware from some developer in France.

Re:MacSFTP is nice for Mac OS X (but $25 shareware

[Paul Burney]

If you're using a Mac, MacSFTP is about the only game in town. It is, IMHO, a very good program and well worth the $25.

The developer has been incredibly responsive with fixes and new features. I highly recommend the program.

Find more info at:

http://macssh.com/ [macssh.com]

Re:MacSFTP is nice for Mac OS X (but $25 shareware

[extra88]

Of course OS X has the command line sftp. For Mac OS 9 GUI there is the commercial app F-Secure (f-secure.com). For OS X GUI there is RBrowser (rbrowser.com) which supports many methods including sftp, scp and tunnelling through ssh.

List of OpenSSH clients

[scubacuda]

FYI, Here [openssh.com] is OpenSSH's [openssh.com] list of free recommended clients for interoperating with OpenSSH from Windows machines.

ssh.com

[bwulf]

.. has a fine client [ssh.com], which includes a file-transfer function.

I use it every day to transfer files from/to home and work.

It does some of the things you mention; easy UI, remote renaming, recursive directory transfers, drag and drop and some other bits.

CuteFTP

[Yarn]

Caveat: I personally use psftp/pscp from the PuTTY ssh toolkit, sftp/scp under Linux or Cygwin.

CuteFTP Pro [cuteftp.com] claims support for SFTP and FTP over SSL.

Some of my users use it, I never have ;)

Re:CuteFTP is fantastic

[adamiis111]

Cuteftp pro (including sftp support) is worth every penny. Full sftp gui functionality over a secure connection (with all sorts of handy helpers)

GFTP is quite nice

[fialar]

You can get a copy here [gftp.org]. The best thing about it is it's multithreaded and you can transfer many files at once.

WinSCP

[Pauly]

If you're still using Windows clients, you really want WinSCP [winscp.vse.cz]. It is closed source, freeware but this is for Windows after all.

One of the many wonderful things about ssh is that is provides many interfaces to the same protocol. The ssh protocol combines file transfer, remote shell access, port forwarding, encryption and compression all on one port/service. That means when you turn on the ssh port, you can access it using an interactive shell (ssh), or an interactive file transfer session (sftp) or an automated file transfer session (scp). WinSCP truthfully acts more like a GUI ftp client, but, when it comes to ssh, what's in a name?

For file synchronization, look into rdist [google.com], rsync [google.com], unison [upenn.edu], and of course NFS [google.com], AFS [google.com], etc.

Vandyke.com

[iguild]

For Win32 I can recommend SecureFX from Vandyke [vandyke.com]

Re:Vandyke.com

[jnana]

Yes, I also strongly recommend SecureFX. It has download resume, drag-and-drop, and tons more.

Oh... SFTP. Not FSP.... HA!

[AtariDatacenter]

I had a flashback to my college days (mid 1990's) where FSP was starting to see wide usage for distributing files. FSP was unofficially dubbed the "Free Software Protocol", which has absolutely nothing to do with Open Source and Free Software, but the delivery of commercial software.

FSP was really appealing because no matter how many people connected to a server, 1 or 100, all the data was delivered by a single UNIX user process. This reduced the file server's profile below the radar of many sysadmins. (As compared to FTPd, which would launch a daemon for each connection and completely saturate a connection.)

You could operate a FSP server right under the nose of your university without them even wandering what is going on.

BTW: You are defining a good SFTP client as one with a GUI?

WinSCP

[GldisAter]

http://winscp.vse.cz/eng/

It's not really an sftp client; it uses a ssh connection to get file information on the remote host and to manipulate those files and uses scp to transfer files.

1.0 has a Norton Commander-like interface.
2.0-beta has both a NC-like and Windows Explorer-like interface.

mindterm ssh from appgate.com

[spike666]

mindterm ssh from appgate.com [appgate.com] takes a novel approach to sftp. in addition to having a popup window that will do the sftp, you can also use the ssh client as an ftp proxy server - meaning you can use standard ftp to the ssh client, and it will then translate that into sftp to your ssh server. meaning you can have your users use whatever ftp client they like.

gnome-vfs?

[1010011010]

I'd like a plug-in for gnome-vfs that allows client apps (like Nautilus) to do sftp.

sftp://whatever would be nice.

It would also be nice if gnome-vfs could copy a file to a local temp file for editing with non-gnome-vfs apps, like nedit, or abiword, and then copy it back when it's closed, saved, etc.

Re:gnome-vfs?

[fingal]

This is one of the reasons why I enjoy using KDE because of the kioslave named kio_fish [hoschi.de]. This lets you enter URLs of the style:-

fish://<user>@<host>/path

This means that you can securely connect to your remote server, browse the file system, open up a text file for editing (or a graphic file or whatever) with the appropriate GUI tool on the local desktop and then save it back to the remote filesystem completely transparently. Greatly reduces the pain of secure remote administration.

SecureFX

[fliplap]

My suggestion would be to go with Vandyke's SecureFX [vandyke.com]. Vandyke is the same company that brought us the beloved SecureCRT. Plus its one of the very few Windows graphical SFTP clients. It does ftp over ssl, sftp, and normal ftp with a very simple user interface. It might be alittle pricey but if you've got the money then go for it.

If you're in a UNIX shop and still want graphical you should check out gftp, I know it also does sftp. Good luck and let us know if you find any other good ones!

Re:Stop trolling

[kcurrie]

Pot. Kettle. Black.

SecureFX (from makers of SecureCRT)

[StandardDeviant]

Stone simple operation. Only disadvantage if you want to call it that is that it's not free. You can get a package deal from the publisher for both programs for USD 129 iirc, i think that FX by itself is something like USD 50.

On the advice of Openssh.com

[xrayspx]

I just grabbed Secure iXplorer [i-tree.org]. This is a GUI app that lets you browse, Windows Explorer style, your remote SFTP directory. So far I'm really impressed, might just use it as file managment for my remote machine, since it's easier to look at than a putty window.

Requires PSCP.exe and plink.exe, which are part of the PuTTY toolkit [greenend.org.uk] iXplorer does include these in its standard install distro.

Both are Open Source (PuTTY is MIT, iXplorer is GPL), both are really swell, and iXplorer would be good for desktop users unfamiliar with a command line.

Re:On the advice of Openssh.com

[the_olo]

But it only works with SSH, not SFTP... If I disallow shell logins for a user, iXplorer is of no use.

Putty

[Tesseract]

If you're using Windoze machines, putty is small, fast, and simple. Even includes a scriptable executable to stuff into your batch scripts. Also comes with psftp, pscp, and pageant (ssh-agent with some key management).

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putt y/

Don't choose FTP

[Anonymous Coward]

FTP is an aging protocol that doesn't deal well with IP Masquerading, etc. Although there's Secure FTP it's just another hack ontop of a flaky protocol.

WebDAV (dot org) uses a subset of HTTP 1.1 and it's generally better in every way. FTP has syncing issues due to using multiple ports for any transmission - so WebDAV is faster (always). It can access via https so it's more secure than sftp. WebDAV clients are included in the base install of Windows '98 (they call them 'web folders'), and there are many Unix clients too (even nice web clients). For servers there are Apache modules, and standalone servers.

Anyway, enough of my rant. FTP is really a bitch to get working. WebDAV has been gaining support for the last five years and it's really quite efficient. If you're picking clients it doesn't look like you're too entrenched in any software. Dump FTP. You'll thank me for it.

Re:Don't choose FTP

[bpalmer]

This comment would mean more if you knew what you're talking about. Secure FTP is a file transfer protocol through a SSH tunnel. There's no resemblance to FTP other than the command set. It runs through an SSH tunnel, so there's no security issue and based on the ability to chose one of many encryption algorithms I'd say it's more secure that a https transfer. There's no multiple ports, all data is transfered through port 22.

For the record, when I'm not at a *nix command line I like SecureFX by Van Dyke.

How about SCP with WinSCP

[Internet Ninja]

We have the same thing. FTP out - SFTP/SCP in.

The best program I've found which also happens to be free is winSCP available from here [winscp.vse.cz].

Various cool options including a choice of two interfaces - Explorer or MC and its codebase is based on putty.

You can also use keys but that's SSH1 only at this stage.

Screen shots here [winscp.vse.cz]

SSH question

[SnicklesTheElf]

Is it possible to enable SSH for shell use but disable SFTP and perhaps SCP?

Re:SSH question

[Em Ellel]

Yes. Sort of.

SFTP itself is an extension of SSH and is defined in your sshd_config file (/etc/ssh/sshd_config under RedHat) You can easily disable that there. However an enterprising user can still find a method around it (Heck, SecureCRT SSH client still supports Z-Modem)

At it's core an SSH connection is just a logical equivalent of a serial channel, so you can encode anything on it as long as you can run an encoder/decoder on both ends. The only way to limit file transfer is to tighten down the ssh config and more importantly shell option (a good example - rbash). As long as a user can run certan binaries or build own executable code on remote end, there is a way around the restrictions.

Buttom line is if you do not want a user to put/execute files on remote machine - don't give them shell access.

-Em Ellel

ckermit

[Dr. Tom]

Kermit has an easy interface, good resume and other nice features, it can do telnet as well as FTP; it also has the latest security stuff built in, including SSH and SRP.

sftp client? pfft..

[yebb]

tar cfz - *myfiles.* | ssh -l username remotehost.com "tar xfz -"