FTP copying files unnecessarily?

[blackpuma]

I can't tell for sure, but when I'm FTPing large files (100s of MB or single-digit gGB), it there's a veeerrrryyyy long wait after the file has been transmitted, with the disk read/write going crazy.

I'm assuming that BC is doing a download to a temporary location, then copying that file to the new location? If this is true, is there a way to turn this off? It's taking longer to copy these files on a laptop's slower 5kRPM hard drive, than to transmit them over a gigabit network.

[Chris]

Re: FTP copying files unnecessarily?

FTP downloads files to a temp file. When the download is complete, the temp file is copied or moved to the target destination. If your temp directory is on a different drive than the FTP file destination, that might explain why this is taking so long.

There isn't a way to disable this behavior.

It might help to change the location of your temp directory. I think BC uses either the %TEMP% or %TMP% variable, so changing the location might help. The default location in Windows should be "c:\documents and settings\<username>\local settings\temp\".

[blackpuma]

Re: FTP copying files unnecessarily?

Very odd.

When I set up the machine, I deliberately set both TMP and TEMP to C:\tmp, and am transferring files to/from drive C. I have no other drives mounted. It may be that the decision algorithm to move or copy is getting confused.

[Zoë]

Re: FTP copying files unnecessarily?

BC2 *never* moves a downloaded file after it's finished. It always keeps a copy in it's temp cache and makes a copy of it from there to the final destination. We're considering some alternatives to this for a future release, but there's no way to configure it differently in the current one.

[blackpuma]

Re: FTP copying files unnecessarily?

Thanks for the information --- knowing what behaviour to expect is important for me. I don't like scratching my head over things like this. I'll live with it for the time being.

I'm moving VMware virtual machines between my laptop (MacBookPro dual booting to WinXP) and Linux workstation. The files are huge.

Fortunately VMware has announced officially that they're coming out with an OS X version of their workstation product. I can hang in there for a month or few.