How to Make Huge Batch Transfers in CrossFTP?

In the could computing era, you may need to transfer huge amount of data from one data center to another. No matter this is on an Amazon S3 cloud platform, or a traditional FTP platform, you need a reliable tool to save your headaches. Here we will show you some guides on how to address the huge batch transfers problems in the CrossFTP to save your life.

1. Add the transfer to the queue. When a huge number of files are selected in the source panel, you will experience problems if you want to Drag & Drop the files to the target. This is due to that the the Drag & Drop goes through the system's clipboard, which has a size limitation. To deal with this problem, you can open the context menu, and choose Transfer/Copy or Queue from this menu. This will directly add the files in the CrossFTP's task queue without going through the system's clipboard. You can see the following figure for the clarification. Meanwhile, you may improve the stability by disabling the directory pane's bundling (which updates the bundled directory pane's content according to the current transfer) by Tools -> Global Options -> Transfer -> Bundle Directory Content during Transfer.

2. Address the memory limit if there is a one (Optional). The CrossFTP program's default maximum heap memory limit is 512Mb. If your transfer queue is so big that the CrossFTP has no enough heap memory for the allocated queue, you can try to increase this memory limit by adding the startup memory flag in CrossFTP's execution script. Windows XP has 2G memory limit; 32-bit systems (Mac OS X, Linux, or Solaris) have maximum 4G limit, while 64bits systems have much higher maximum limit. The command to setup the heap size in Java virtual machine is -Xms (for the initial heap size) and  -Xmx (for the maximum heap size). For example, the following line in the execution script setups CrossFTP to use 128m as initial heap size, and 512m as maxium heap size:

java -Xms128m -Xmx512m ...crossftp_other_startups...

3. Error recovery.  All your transfer history can be found in the Logs -> Transfer history. You can check that to see if there is anything wrong with the batch transfer. Meanwhile, if CrossFTP crashes during a long time batch transfer, you can always recover the transfer when the CrossFTP restart. Just choose the Recovery Mode on the Queue Restore Dialog, and your crashed queue file can be found and reloaded in this mode.

We hope you will find our post useful and will enjoy the easiness of CrossFTP Pro. As always we appreciate your feedback as it helps to make the product better!

What has kept us Being Busy in CrossFTP

There has been for a short period of silence on this web site. During this period, we are busy improving our CrossFTP client. Here highlights a few major improvements we are under going:

 Enhanced Amazon S3 Support

• The S3 head metadata's modification support. You can easily modify and add metadata on one or multiple files stored on S3 site. For example, you can add cache-control header like "max-age" or "expires" with a time value for your S3 files. This will help you to specify the browser cache's living time, and save your cost.

• Data compression for S3 file transfers. GZip based data compression is now supported by CrossFTP Pro. Just choose Site Manger -> Options -> Data Compression. After that, all files upoads for this site will be automatically compressed. In the log window, you should be able to find the messages like "GZip Compressed". The download process will automatically uncompress the files on the fly. Need to mention that, we also support FTP and SFTP protocol's data compression by toggling this option. That is, if your chosen protocol is FTP, compression will be made by Mode Z on the fly, and if your chosen protocol is SFTP/SSH, the compression will be made by zlib on the fly. To save your bandwidth and cost, you can try this easy and powerful option.
• Log configurations for the buckets and CloudFront Distribution. Now we have provided those Amazon S3's logging configuration GUI. We think you will like it.
• Data encryption. Security is an important issue when you put your data on the cloud. This support in CrossFTP Pro is still under working to figure out what is the best way.
  
• Various bug fixes. We use the virtual directory simulation to simulate the folder structures for your S3 files. Separator character "/" in your s3 object's key is treated as a folder symbol. Some of your folders may not have such placeholders objects (due to your files are created by some other tools, etc.), we will ask you whether you want to add the placeholder objects to your S3 site. If the answer is yes, we will help to fix the virtual directory problem.

Enhanced SFTP/SSH Command Support

• Execute your command directly on your SFTP/SSH site. SSH protocol allows you to login and execute command on your remote site. Now CrossFTP Pro directly supports such command execution. It works similar with the FTP's command execution. Check Manage FTP Sites by FTP commands.
  
• Remote Archive/Extraction support. If you wants to upload/download a lot of small files, the best way to save your time is to archive them before the transfer and extract them after the transfer. The problem is that the remote site cannot archive/extract your zip files. No, this is not a problem anymore. Now it is supported in CrossFTP Pro for SFTP protocol. You should have a try and save your time for transferring.

More FTP Listing Format Support

Here are the list of format we supported in the previous versions:

• Unix ls (ProFTPd, Wu-FTPd, Microsoft FTP and many others)
• DOS (Microsoft FTP and others)
• VMS and MultiNet (both single and multiline)

We now added the following list format support:

• OS/2
• OS/400
• Netware
• Connect:Enterprise Unix
  
• glFTPd ansi-colored list
• support for custom list parsers

Misc Enhancements

• Improved Snow Leopard and Windows 7 support. This few months are busy days for the operating system. We will keep our software good on that.
  
• Ident-server protocol support. This is an ancient protocol, but when you need it, you should be able to use it. Now this is added in CrossFTP Pro.
• Checksum for MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512, and CRC32 are supported.
• And a lot of various bug fixes!
  

CrossFTP 1.55a is a major update and will be released soon, which includes most of the above enhancement. This is a free update, and is recommended for all CrossFTP Users.

CrossFTP 1.53b Released

CrossFTP is an excellent FTP client. CrossFTP Pro is a FTP client supporting SFTP, FXP, WebDav, Sun Cloud Storage and Amazon S3.

CrossFTP 1.53b adds new Spanish and Netherlands translation, and fixes a number of bugs.

CrossFTP 1.53 Released

CrossFTP is an excellent FTP client. CrossFTP Pro is a FTP client supporting SFTP, FXP, WebDav, Sun Cloud Storage and Amazon S3.

CrossFTP 1.53 is a major enhancement version. This version provides the Sun Cloud Storage preview support, significantly improves the reliability and performance for the huge bulk transfer, adds the reveal in file manager function, and fixes a number of bugs.

CrossFTP Software will be on exhibition at JavaOne Conference

As a partner of Sun Cloud Storage project, CrossFTP will participate the exhibition at JavaOne Conference in San Francisco. We are proud to provide the new service technologies for cloud storage, and to show how CrossFTP can help you. Our exhibition time is Jun 1st and Jun 2nd.
Here is JavaOne Conference Info Site for your reference.

Update: We have a nice experience at JavaOne, and met peoples who are interested in the Cloud Computing era. Here we attach the picture of our booth at the JavaOne.

CrossFTP 1.52 Released

CrossFTP is an excellent FTP client. CrossFTP Pro is a FTP client supporting SFTP, FXP, WebDav, and Amazon S3.

CrossFTP 1.52 is a major enhancement version. This version adds WebDav lock/unlock function, improves the FXP transfer, speed updates, and fixes a number of bugs.

Home page: http://www.crossftp.com

CrossFTP Pro and Amazon CloudFront Distribution

Amazon recently announced CloudFront service, its version of reliable and cost efficient Content Delivery Network that is seamlessly integrated with Amazon S3. It makes it easier for you to distribute content to end users quickly, with low latency and high data transfer speeds. Amazon CloudFront delivers your content through a worldwide network of edge locations. End users are routed to the nearest edge location, so content is delivered with the best possible performance.

To create CloudFront Distribution in CrossFTP Pro, you have to select one Bucket, or inside one Bucket, and choose Manage CloudFront Distributions in the context menu, as shown in the following figure.


A new List Distribution dialog will be shown. You can create new Distributions, or Edit the existing ones in this dialog. A Distribution dialog will be popped up if you create or edit a distribution. In this new dialog, you should Enable the Amazon Distribution, and optionally fill in the comments as well as a list of CNAMEs. Once you've made the modification, click OK to take effect, and the List Distribution dialog will be refreshed accordingly. Keep in mind that Status field will be “In Progress” while Amazon copies your files to the edge servers and turn to “Deployed” when done.



You can temporarily disable a distribution by clearing out “Enable Amazon CloudFront Distribution” checkbox. To delete a distribution, you need to disable the distribution first, and then select delete to remove the distribution.

We hope you will find our post useful and will enjoy the easiness of CrossFTP Pro. As always we appreciate your feedback as it helps to make the product better!

CrossFTP and Amazon S3 Service

Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) is an online on-demand data storage service offered by Amazon Web Services. Amazon's S3 provides a simple web server to access any file that is stored in their storage cloud. This means, you can access files stored at S3, or directly via a web browser, if you have set the permissions as "read" for all users.

To get an Amazon S3 account:

1. Open page sign up for amazon s3 and locate a Sign Up button towards right side of this page. Click the button and follow instructions.
2. After success registration, you will find Access key and Secret key at Your Account -> Security Credentials. Your access key is visible but your secret key, which serves as a password, is hidden within "show" label. You need these two keys to start working with Amazon S3 Services. 

To Connect to Amazon S3 in CrossFTP:

1. Create a new site in CrossFTP, and choose Protocol as S3/HTTPS
   
2. Fill in the Access Key and Secret field. Press connect to connect to the S3 site. Your Access key and Secret key can also be found at this page.
3. [opt-in region only] Regional endpoint should be used for opt-in S3 regions for the Host field. See S3 endpoint table (link) for the regional endpoint for details.
   

How to Create Bucket in CrossFTP?
Bucket : Each of the files and folders stored in Amazon S3 is contained in a bucket. It's like "top level folder" or "top level drive". Bucket names are globally unique. If you want to use these buckets for web hosting, try to choose a bucket name, which is a valid host name and everything should be lower case:

Valid Name : bucket2008, 1bucket, 01_bucket, 01.bucket, www.example.com
Invalid Name :_bucket, .bucket, -bucket, 01-.bucket,01.-bucket, 127.0.0.1

To create a bucket in CrossFTP, just go to the root folder \, and choose Create a new Folder. You will be allowed to choose whether your bucket's location is in US or EU, which means to a unites state's bucket, or Europe's bucket. Press OK to finish the bucket creation.

How to transfer files from/to Amazon S3?
Just like the traditional FTP file transfer, you can just Drag & Drop the files from/to your S3 site. Multiple tabs, multiple threads, queue modifications, directory synchronizations, etc are naturally supported for the S3 transfer as well.

How to grant proper ACL for IAM account to list buckets and files

Here is a sample ACL setting for IAM account's AWS managed policies:

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": {
                "AWS": "iam-user-arn"
            },
            "Action": [
                "s3:PutObject",
                "s3:GetObject",
                "s3:GetObjectVersion",
                "s3:ListBucket"
            ],
            "Resource": "bucket-arn"
        }
    ]
}

Backup files in Glacier/Deep Archive Storage

To make cost effective backup and restore of files through Glacier/Deep Archive storage, check this page.

Conclusion

We hope you will find our post useful and will enjoy the easiness of CrossFTP Pro. As always we appreciate your feedback as it helps to make the product better!

Edit Remote Files in CrossFTP

Edit the files in the remote FTP site can be as simple as one click in CrossFTP. You can press the edit button, or shortcut F3 to edit the selected file, as shown in the above figure. You can also modify your preferred editor to meet your requirement. Just choose Tools -> Global Options -> Operations, as shown in the above figure.

If you want to open certain types of files with specific editor, for example, htm file by dreamweaver, and txt file by notebook, you can further specify the openning program for each type of file. To do this, just choose your file, open the context menu in the file pane, and select Edit/Open with -> Choose Program. After setting up your preferred program, you can reuse it in future.

We hope you will find our post useful and will enjoy the easiness of CrossFTP Pro. As always we appreciate your feedback as it helps to make the product better!

CrossFTP 1.51 Released

CrossFTP is an excellent FTP client. CrossFTP Pro is a FTP client supporting SFTP, FXP, WebDav, and Amazon S3.

CrossFTP 1.51 is a major enhancement release. It starts to support FTP Web URL and preview in browser, advanced log management utility, Web CrossFTP Pro's customization, archive files and directories, Amazon CloudFront distribution management, S3 signed URL, S3 object head display. It also fixes a lot of known issues in the FXP transfer, SFTP link file support, and further improves the stability of the file transfer engine.

Home page: http://www.crossftp.com

CrossFTP Server 1.12 Released

CrossFTP Server is a user-friendly, professional FTP Server for multiple platforms. It offers a high-performance, easy configurable, and most of all a secure enabled FTP server. It provides a versatile GUI for the novice users' start-up, and the advanced users' configuration as well.

CrossFTP Server 1.12 is a bug fixes release. It fixes the configure dialog's display problem, and the tray icon suspension in the Mac OS X system.

Home page: http://www.crossftp.com/crossftpserver.htm

Fast filter and search the file in list

Search and find a file in the file list is a common task for heavy FTP users. Sometimes when you need to fastly locate the file, it is often a headache for your eye. However, CrossFTP makes this very simple. It provides a fast way to do this by using a filter box in the right bottom corner. You can also press / on your keyboard to go to this fast filter box. Take the above Figure as an example, by filling in the file name in the filter box, the Linux's kernel files are dynamically filtered and displayed in the directory pane.

We hope you will find our post useful and will enjoy the easiness of CrossFTP Pro. As always we appreciate your feedback as it helps to make the product better!

Manage FTP sites by FTP command

FTP commands provide a useful way to manage your FTP site remotely. Some FTP servers support a rich set of FTP commands to manage the users, groups, quotas, and so on.

CrossFTP Pro offers powerful command line tool to easily manage your multiple FTP servers. To open the command line tool, choose View -> Command Line, and you will see the command line tool to appear below the FTP files panel. To submit a command to the FTP server, just enter your command, and presee ENTER.

CrossFTP Pro predefines a number of FTP commands for several famous FTP servers. The predefined command set in CrossFTP Pro contains glFTPd, glFTPd admin, RaidenFTPD, ioFTPD, Serv-U and DrFTPD. They are defined in the file ~/.crossftp/ftpcmd.xml (on windows is C:\Documents and Settings\username\.crossftp\ftpcmd.xml). You can also modify this configuration file to add your preferred command set.

CrossFTP Pro also support to manage a number of FTP sites simultaneously. You should already know that CrossFTP is a multi-tabbed FTP client. If you have a list of similar FTP sites, and have already opened them in the CrossFTP's tabs, you can submit the FTP command to these sites simultaneously without reentering the command many times. To do this, just choose "Sumbit to All Tabs" in the popup menu, as shown in the picture, and then input the command and press ENTER. That's it, very easy, right?

Any commands or suggestions on the command tools are welcome!

How to change the files' default Mime types for Amazon S3 in CrossFTP?

Each file in Amazon S3 is associated with Mime types. The file's mime type will be sent to the client when the file is downloaded. The mime type is important for the end users since normally the client will decide how to process the file according to its mime type.

The good news is that, it is relatively simple to change the files' default mime types for Amazon S3 in CrossFTP client. You can use any of your favorite text editor, and edit the file named mime.types to change it, which contains all files' default mime information in CrossFTP. You can find the mime.types file at:

• In windows: (if you install your windows in c drive) C:/Documents and Settings/USER_NAME/.crossftp/mime.types, where USER_NAME is your system's login name.
• In *nix: ~/.crossftp/mime.types

After modifying the mime.types, restart CrossFTP, and all the changes will take effect.

We hope you will find our post useful and will enjoy the easiness of CrossFTP Pro. As always we appreciate your feedback as it helps to make the product better!

CrossFTP 1.50 Released

CrossFTP is an excellent FTP client. CrossFTP Pro is a FTP client supporting SFTP, FXP, WebDav, and Amazon S3.

CrossFTP 1.50 changes to a new vivid icon theme, adds a new default system file icon set, improves the Drag & Drop behavior, and fixes a lot of bugs.

CrossFTP 1.42 Released

CrossFTP is an excellent FTP client. CrossFTP Pro is a secure FTP/FXP/SFTP/WebDav/S3 client and synchronization tool.

CrossFTP 1.42 is a major enhancement release. It improves the user interface, fixes a number of bugs, and adds new Amazon S3 support in CrossFTP Pro.

Minor Update on the CrossFTP 1.41

Have you ever met the problem when you open a lot of site tabs, and got lost in them?
Finding the proper site tab is a time consuming task in this case.

We know this problem, and we help you to solve it. Now we provide the site's favicon for the tab, so that you can quickly pick up the correct site tab for your tasks. Meanwhile, the icon is shown in the site manager as well for your quick access of the site in the site list. Hope you will like this feature.

A New Review for CrossFTP

We got a new review from Softpedia and got an excellent five score mark. Here is the reference:
http://www.softpedia.com/reviews/linux/CrossFTP--Review-92296.shtml
Glad that more and more people are paying attention to CrossFTP.

CrossFTP Server 1.10 Released

CrossFTP Server is a user-friendly, professional FTP Server for multiple platforms. It offers a high-performance, easy configurable, and most of all a secure enabled FTP server. It provides a versatile GUI for the novice users' start-up, and the advanced users' configuration as well.

CrossFTP Server 1.10 is a bug fixes release. It fixes the file logging function in the command line mode, and the user enable/disable function.

CrossFTP 1.41 Released

CrossFTP is an excellent FTP client. CrossFTP Pro is a secure FTP/FXP/SFTP/WebDav client and synchronization tool.

CrossFTP 1.41 is a major enhancement release. It adds the priority queuing, keymap shortcuts profile support, SFV generator, etc.; The Pro version adds IPV6 support, account support, customized commands after login, predefined site commands, SFV verification, CCC command, Move to support, and more. A lot of bugs are fixed.