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Working with Workload Objects › File Transfer Jobs › FTP Jobs › Define an FTP Job

Define an FTP Job

You can define an FTP job to automate FTP transfers. The output is directed to the spool file through an FTP server.

Note: To run these jobs, your system requires CA WA Agent for UNIX, Linux, Windows, or i5/OS.

Follow these steps:

  1. Open the Application that you want to add the job to in the Define perspective.

    The Application appears in the workspace.

  2. Select the FTP job from the File Transfer group in the Palette view, and drag the job to the workspace.

    The FTP icon appears on the Application workspace view.

  3. Right-click the FTP icon, and select Edit from the pop-up menu.

    The Basic page of the FTP dialog opens.

  4. Complete the following required fields:
    Name

    Defines the name of the job that you want to schedule.

    Limits: 128 alphanumeric characters, plus the special characters commercial at (@), pound (#), dollar sign ($), underscore (_), square brackets ([]), brace brackets ({}), and percent sign (%) as a symbolic variable introducer character.

    Agent name

    Specifies the name of the agent where the FTP transfer takes place.

    Note: The drop-down list displays all the agents that are defined in the Topology for the specified job type.

    User

    Specifies the user ID of the user with the authority to download the file from the remote FTP server or upload the file to the remote FTP server. The user must be defined in the Topology. This field supports the use of a namespace for a user that has more than one password. Contact your administrator for the user name defined in the Topology.

    Examples: Bob, Production:Bob

    Note: The drop-down list displays all the user IDs that are defined in the Topology for the specified agent. You must have at least Read access to the ADMIN.Network Topology permission to view this list.

    Server address

    Specifies the DNS name or IP address of a remote server.

    Example: 172.24.36.107 (IPv4) or 0:0:0:0:0:FFFF:192.168.00.00 (IPv6)

    Remote file name

    Specifies the file's source location (if downloading) or the file's destination (if uploading).

    Note: You can specify multiple files. Separate each file name with a semi-colon. The number of files specified in the Local file name and Remote file name fields must match.

    UNIX/Windows:

    • If you are uploading a file, you must specify the full path and file name.
    • If you are downloading files, you can use wildcards in the file name. The asterisk (*) is a wildcard for zero or more characters and the question mark (?) is a wildcard for a single character.
    • If a wildcard is used in a remote file name for download, the local file name (the target) must refer to a directory. A wildcard transfer is equivalent to an mget transfer using an FTP client.
    • You cannot use wildcards in the path.
    • On UNIX, if you want to use a Windows file as a remote file, you must use a forward slash at the beginning of the path statement and between the directories and file name, for example, /C:/TEMP/textfile.

    i5/OS:

    • To specify a file in the root file system, use UNIX path and file formats.
    • To specify a *FILE object in QSYS, use the following format: 
          /QSYS.LIB/libraryname.LIB/objectname.FILE/membername.MBR
    Local file name

    Specifies the file's destination (if downloading) or the file's source location (if uploading).

    Notes:

    • You can specify multiple files. Separate each file name with a semi-colon. The number of files specified in the Local file name and Remote file name fields must match.
    • If the agent user does not have access to the file's location, specify the user that has access to the location in the Run as user field.

    UNIX/Windows:

    • If you are downloading a file, you must specify the full path and file name.
    • If you are uploading files, you can use wildcards in the file name. The asterisk (*) is a wildcard for zero or more characters and the question mark (?) is a wildcard for a single character.
    • If a wildcard is used in a local file name for upload, the remote file name (the target) must refer to a directory. A wildcard transfer is equivalent to an mget transfer using an FTP client.
    • You cannot use wildcards in the path.

    i5/OS:

    • To specify a file in the root file system, use UNIX path and file formats.
    • To specify a *FILE object in QSYS, use the following format: 
          /QSYS.LIB/libraryname.LIB/objectname.FILE/membername.MBR
    Transfer direction

    Indicates the direction of transfer (Download or Upload).

    Default: Download

    Transfer code type

    Specifies the type of data you are transferring. Options are as follows:

    Binary

    Indicates a binary transfer.

    ASCII

    Indicates an ASCII transfer.

    i5/OS: If the ASCII file to be transferred already exists on the target computer, the file is written using the encoding of the existing file. If the file does not exist, the file is written using the ASCII CCSID (Coded Character Set Identifier) defined on the agent. The default is 819.

    EBCDIC

    Indicates an EBCDIC transfer.

    Note: EBCDIC applies to jobs running on System i5 only. If an EBCDIC file to be transferred already exists on the target computer, the file is written using the encoding of the existing file. If the file does not exist, the file is written using the EBCDIC CCSID (Coded Character Set Identifier) defined on the agent. The default is 37.

    Default: Binary

  5. (Optional) Specify the following additional information:
    Job Class

    Specifies the job class under which this job runs. The agent maintains a list of job classes and the number of initiators assigned to each job class. A job class with more initiators can process more jobs more quickly. For higher-priority jobs, assign a job class that contains more initiators.

    Example: foo

    Note: To find out which job classes exist and how many initiators are assigned, ask your agent administrator to check the initiators.class_n parameter in the agent parameter file (agentparm.txt).

    Server port

    Specifies the port number of the remote server.

    Default: 22

    Local user

    Specifies a user ID on the UNIX or Linux computer where the agent is installed. This user ID determines the access permissions of a downloaded file on the agent computer and does not apply to uploads. When the file is downloaded, the file is created with this user as the file owner. To set the owner of a downloaded file, the agent must run as root.

    Notes:

    • The local user does not need to be defined in the Topology.
    • Your agent administrator can specify a default local user for all FTP, Secure Copy, and Secure FTP jobs by setting the ftp.download.owner parameter in the agent's agentparm.txt file.
    • The value in this field overrides the default setting specified in the ftp.download.owner parameter in the agent's agentparm.txt.
    Compression level

    Defines the compression level (0 is no data compression, 9 is the best data compression).

    Default: Default compression level set on the agent FTP client

    SSL connection

    Indicates whether to transfer the data using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) communication (True or False).

    Default: Default FTP setting (regular FTP or SSL FTP) on the agent

    FTP site commands

    Defines the commands that are to be executed prior to file transfer. You can use this section to send site-specific FTP commands to FTP servers.

    Run as user

    Specifies the user ID that runs the job on behalf of the agent user. You can use this field to access remote resources that the agent user does not have access to. You are restricted to how you can access data on remote computers. To access restricted remote resources, you can run the job under a user ID that has access to those resources. The user must be defined in the Topology. This field supports the use of a namespace for a user that has more than one password. Contact your administrator for the user name defined in the Topology.

    Examples: Bob, Production:Bob

    Notes:

    • The drop-down list displays all the user IDs that are defined in the Topology for the specified agent. You must have at least Read access to the ADMIN.Network Topology permission to view this list.
    • This user must have access to the file’s location that you specify in the Local file name field.
    • On UNIX, the password for this user is not required.
  6. Click OK.

    The FTP job is defined.

Example: Upload Multiple Files to a Directory Using a Wildcard

Suppose that you want to upload all the files in the C:\ca directory to the E:\ftp directory on a remote Windows server.

Follow these steps:

  1. Enter the following information in the Basic page:
  2. Select the Upload and ASCII option buttons.
  3. Click OK.

Example: Upload a File From a Local Computer to a Remote Windows Server Using SSL FTP

Suppose that the agent runs on a local computer as an FTP client and has SSL FTP configured, but not enabled. The remote Windows server has SSL FTP configured and enabled.

To securely upload a file from the agent FTP client to the remote Windows FTP server, set SSL connection to True in the FTP job definition. Although the agent FTP client does not have SSL FTP enabled, the file is uploaded using SSL FTP because the agent FTP client has SSL FTP configured and the FTP server has SSL FTP enabled.

The following diagram shows the scenario:

This example uploads a file from a local computer to a remote Windows server using SSL FTP.

Suppose the FTP job FTP_UPLOAD uploads the file d:\files_to_upload\filename.txt from the agent FTP client to the c:\uploaded_files directory on a remote Windows server named winserver. The agent SYSAGENT logs into the remote Windows server using user user1. Because the FTP client has SSL configured but not enabled, SSL connection is set to True to transfer the file securely.

Follow these steps:

  1. Enter the following information in the Basic page:
  2. Select the Upload and ASCII option buttons.
  3. Select True from the SSL connection drop-down list.
  4. Click OK.

Example: Download a File from a Remote UNIX Server that Does Not Support SSL FTP to a Local Computer that Supports SSL FTP

Suppose that the agent runs on a local computer as an FTP client and has SSL FTP enabled (all FTP jobs on the agent computer run using SSL FTP). The remote UNIX server does not support SSL FTP.

The following diagram shows the scenario:

This example downloads a file from a remote UNIX server that does not support SSL FTP to a local computer that supports SSL FTP.

Suppose that the FTP job FTP_DOWNLOAD downloads the file /files_to_download/filename.txt from the remote UNIX server hpunix to the c:\downloaded_files directory on the local server. The agent SYSAGENT logs into the remote UNIX server using user user1. Because the FTP server does not support SSL FTP, SSL connection is set to False.

Follow these steps:

  1. Enter the following information in the Basic page:
  2. Select the Download and ASCII option buttons.
  3. Select False from the SSL connection drop-down list.

    Note: To transfer FTP data, you must set SSL connection to False. Otherwise, the job will fail.

  4. Click OK.

Example: Upload an ASCII-encoded File in the Root File System from an i5/OS System to a UNIX System

Suppose that the FTP job FTP_UPLOAD uploads a file named textfile in the root file system is uploaded from an i5/OS system to a UNIX system. Note that the two locations include a complete path statement.

Follow these steps:

  1. Enter the following information in the Basic page:
  2. Select the Upload and ASCII option buttons.
  3. Select False from the SSL connection drop-down list.

    Note: To transfer FTP data, you must set SSL connection to False. Otherwise, the job will fail.

  4. Click OK.

Example: Download a QSYS.LIB EBCDIC-encoded File

Suppose that the FTP_DOWNLOAD job downloads an EBCDIC-encoded file named datafile in the QSYS.LIB file system from an i5/OS system to another i5/OS system. Note that the file names are specified in the path format.

Follow these steps:

  1. Enter the following information in the Basic page:
  2. Select the Download and EBCDIC option buttons.
  3. Select False from the SSL connection drop-down list.

    Note: To transfer FTP data, you must set SSL connection to False. Otherwise, the job will fail.

  4. Click OK.

Example: Upload and Convert an EBCDIC-encoded File to ASCII

Suppose that the FTP_CONVERT job uploads a file member named RESULT from an i5/OS system to a UNIX system. The job automatically detects that the RESULT file member is EBCDIC-encoded and that the target UNIX system accepts only ASCII-encoded files. The I5Agent agent is configured to automatically convert EBCDIC-encoded files to ASCII during an upload to an ASCII system, so the RESULT file member uploads successfully.

Follow these steps:

  1. Enter the following information in the Basic page:
  2. Select the Upload and ASCII option buttons.
  3. Select False from the SSL connection drop-down list.

    Note: To transfer FTP data, you must set SSL connection to False. Otherwise, the job will fail.

  4. Click OK.

Example: Compress a File and Download it Using SSL

Suppose that the local server has an agent running as an FTP client. The remote server has the agent running as an FTP server. SSL FTP is enabled on both FTP client and FTP server. Both servers operate on a low bandwidth network.

Suppose that the FTP job FTPJOB downloads a large file named /files_to_download/largefile.txt from the remote server aixunix to the c:\downloaded_files directory on the FTP client. The agent SYSAGENT logs into the remote UNIX server using user user1. The servers are on a low bandwidth network, so the data is compressed at compression level 3. By default, the job runs using SSL FTP because SSL FTP is enabled on both FTP client and FTP server.

Follow these steps:

  1. Enter the following information in the Basic page:
  2. Select the Download and ASCII option buttons.
  3. Click OK.

Example: Send Two FTP Commands to an FTP Server

Suppose that you want to send two FTP commands to the FTP server prior to transferring a file.

Follow these steps:

  1. Enter the following information in the Basic page:
  2. Select the Download and EBCDIC option buttons.
  3. Click Add in the FTP site commands section.

    A new row is added to the Command table.

  4. Enter site date in the new row.
  5. Click Add in the FTP site commands section.

    A new row is added to the Command table.

  6. Enter site recfm=FB in the new row.
  7. Click OK.

Example: Download a File from an FTP server to a Remote Location using Run as User

Suppose that you want to download a file (download_test.txt) from a remote FTP server to a remote location that the agent user does not have access to. An additional user (user2) that has access to the remote location is specified.

Follow these steps:

  1. Enter the following information in the Basic page:
  2. Select the Download and ASCII option buttons.
  3. Click OK.

More information:

Using a Namespace for a User that has Different Passwords

FTP Jobs