Right Click Tar/ Compress

I can't seem to create a custom command for Tar and Compress.

For example what I'd like to do is:

Right click a directory, and use the tar command.
e.g. Right click "derf", choose tar and it will execute: tar -cf derf.tar ./derf

Then would like to do another custom command for compress
e.g. right click derf.tar, choose compress and it will execute: compress derf.tar

Has anyone else been able to do this?

Thanks!

You will probably never be able to do this, because most FTP servers do not allow you to execute arbitrary commands via FTP. Commands are usually restricted to CHMOD and a few others. SmartFTP in turn can, of course, only use the commands that are made available by the FTP server.

Good point.

I know it's probably beyond the scope, and I probably don't know what I'm asking for, but would it be possible to somehow invoke a silent telnet session for the ability to execute these types of commands?

Better yet, is there any solutions out there?

Thanks!

There currently is no "clean" way I can think of to do this. At least, you (currently) cannot execute programs on your local hard disk (like Telnet or SSH) from within a Custom Command menu entry, i.e. you cannot use the SmartFTP GUI to do this.

However, depending on your "freak level" and amount of work you are willing to invest (and depending on the level of access you have to the server), you could e.g. (on the server side) watch a directory for a file "do_tar_gz" to get uploaded which contains the name of the folder to get compressed. A script on the server then compresses the folder and deletes the uploaded dummy file. This is, obviously, quite crazy

You will probably never be able to do this, because most FTP servers do not allow you to execute arbitrary commands via FTP. Commands are usually restricted to CHMOD and a few others. SmartFTP in turn can, of course, only use the commands that are made available by the FTP server.

Just to encourage the possibility of SmartFTP supporting an 'untar' while uploading:

SmartFTP does not have to rely on any of the functionality available, or restricted, on the server to acomplish this. The SmartFTP application itself can do the 'uncompression' of any compressed file before it uploads the files, and upload them as appropriate.

What about this?

As I understood it, the initial request was to compress files on the server using a custom command. If SmartFTP was to compress the files, it would have to download the uncompressed files, compress them, and upload the archive again. Hardly a good solution ...