Feature request - rclone serve ftp

[ghost]

I would like to be able to access an rclone remote as though it were a directory on an FTP server. Basically, rclone would be the ftp server, and remotes are subdirectories under the root. I could then use the client of my choice (filezilla) to do things like move files via drag-n-drop and rename files/folders. Of course, I shouldn't be able to delete the remotes, but everything else should work as though it were a normal file or folder on an ftp server. Any reason this would not be feasible?

[danielloader]

Tried using webDAV for this? Need a different client like filezilla pro, but windows and other operating systems can mount webDAV as a drive without extra software.

[ncw]

At the moment we have rclone serve webdav and rclone serve http for read only access.

I could imagine an rclone serve ftp or rclone serve sftp.

Another choice you have is to use rclone mount and then serve the mounted directory with an ftp server.

[sapk]

I can try something if that is ok? I find serve command to be very usefull to use rclone inside container without extra permissions to serve as a proxy to external hosting and ftp protocol should be a good addition to it.

I would suggest using https://github.com/fclairamb/ftpserver or https://github.com/goftp/server.

To compare ftp features that they offer :

• https://github.com/fclairamb/ftpserver/blob/d2ce42e2772d016e168a22d4b024ba4fc08a564c/server/server.go#L31
• https://github.com/goftp/server/blob/3bb68cbcc4fd8e6fb51088155a304782c62f477c/cmd.go#L28

FTP Commands: https://www.iana.org/assignments/ftp-commands-extensions/ftp-commands-extensions.xhtml

Both use standard library (except fclairamb/ftpserver that use go-kit for logging)

[ncw]

@sapk yes that would be great if you wanted to have a go.

You should find the vfs layer gives you objects which do everything you need nearly. I note that in goftp the file objects are nearly os.FileInfo - I might be inclined to add the Owner() and Group() methods to the vfs Node object.

I'd start from the webdav code which has the boiler plate for making a VFS. From there it should be reasonably straight forward to plug either of those FTP servers in.

For unit tests, you can wire up the ftp backend to unit test the ftp server - that is what I did with webdav and I think it worked quite well.

As for which to choose... goftp/server is a slightly more active project. I'm not sure about the features though, so I don't have a strong preference! I'd probably prefer not to import go-kit.

[ncw]

Thanks to @sapk this is now done!

rclone now has a serve ftp command.

Find it in the latest beta (in 15-30 mins) and it will be in v1.44.

Please put any issues found in a new issue - thanks.