Transfer files using Midnight Commander

Midnight commander, mc for short, can be compared to the Swiss Army knife. This software is in the active development since 1994 and includes all the tools you may require during emergencies. Package takes less than 10mb of space and can be installed on virtually any Linux system.

Mc provides you with the two panes which represent two locations either local or remote. You can do operations on the files such as create, remove, move, copy. File ownership and permissions could also be adjusted. Text files can be edited within the midnight commander via inbuilt text editor. The FTP and Shell client is definitely a cherry on top.

Ubuntu / Debian:

apt-get install mc

Centos:

yum install mc

Midnight command is not only capable of managing the remote file systems, you can use it for local data transfers too. This may be quite useful for the server migration, you can visually inspect the directory structure for the required files.

Mc has inbuilt clients for the sFTP, SMB, CIFS protocols along the standard bash shell transfers.

To open the top menu, either move your mouse to that area and click on it or press F9. Then select FTP Link with the arrow keys or press shift + P to open the new connection menu. To move around you can either use the TAB button or arrow keys. Mouse should also be supported on any modern system using putty or terminal.

If you do not remember the syntax, press F1 for examples.

If you wish to paste the password, press shift + insert to paste into the box.

Move arrow key to OK and press enter.

Upon successful login you should see the right pane changing, with the list of directories of the remote system.

To transfer the files across, highlight the file or directory and press F5.

This way you can upload and download files across two systems.

To quit press F10, if you do not have this button on your keyboard type in exit and press enter.