Ftp put breaks my gif ?

Question

Using the following script, I upload gifs on my ftp server. The scripts seems to work, but when I tried to access the image in my browser they are broken. Any idea why ?

#!/bin/sh                                   
HOST='myftp'                       
USER='mylogin'                              

ftp -n $HOST <<END_SCRIPT                   
quote USER $USER                            
quote PASS $1                               
put $2                                      
quit                                        
END_SCRIPT                                  
exit 0     

Answer 1

Your images get uploaded in network ASCII mode rather that binary mode.

Network ASCII mode is useful when transferring text files (plain text, HTML, etc.). If you transfer, e.g., a text file from a client running Windows to a server running Linux, it will automatically convert all Windows line breaks (13 10) into Unix line breaks (10) and add a trailing end-of-file character (10).

Evidently, this causes file corruption when transferring binary files such as images.

To switch to binary mode, execute this command before put:

binary

From man ftp:

ascii    Set the file transfer type to network ASCII.
         This is the default type.

binary   Set the file transfer type to support binary image transfer.