Submit Hint Search The Forums LinksStatsPollsHeadlinesRSS
14,000 hints and counting!

Fugu: A nice graphical front-end to sftp and more... Pick of the Week
Fugu imageThe macosxhints Rating:
9 of 10
[Score: 9 out of 10]
Fugu is a freeware GUI front-end to the UNIX sftp, scp, and ssh protocols. Of these, the reason I use it most of the time is for its sftp support -- sftp is secure FTP, which is much like FTP except that your transmissions are encrypted, so you don't have to worry about password (or other data) intercepts while you're FTPing files back and forth.

If you've used Panic's excellent Transmit, the Fugu interface will look familiar -- a two-panel window with your stuff on the left, and the host files on the right. Drag and drop from one side to the other to upload or download files. One other nice feature is an in-program image preview -- double-click an image on a server, and it will download and then display in a small window directly within Fugu. While this won't save any download time, it's nice in that I don't have to switch apps to make sure I downloaded the right image file.

Fugu reads existing SSH connection information, so if you've already set up password-free secure connections, you won't have to re-enter your passwords to use Fugu. Overall, this is an amazingly professional piece of free software -- kudos the University of Michigan's Research Systems UNIX Group!
    •    
  • Currently 1.63 / 5
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  (8 votes cast)
 
[22,055 views]  

Fugu: A nice graphical front-end to sftp and more... | 19 comments | Create New Account
Click here to return to the 'Fugu: A nice graphical front-end to sftp and more...' hint
The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
Fugu: A nice graphical front-end to sftp and more...
Authored by: Mikey-San on Feb 09, '04 10:49:40AM

If you've used Transmit, well, Fugu's UI will look like a substandard ripoff.

Sorry.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Fugu: A nice graphical front-end to sftp and more...
Authored by: helicine on Feb 09, '04 10:58:05AM

sorry to say, but Transmit's layout is far from original - shades of Fetch and countless PC FTP apps that predate it

both are nice programs tho, I use Fugu for simple jobs because it is simply much faster than Transmit and it uses my SSH keys

Transmit (which I registered) I keep around for FTP and more complicated SFTP jobs since Fugu can't handle some things Transmit does



[ Reply to This | # ]
Agreed
Authored by: mahuti on Feb 09, '04 11:11:35AM

Transmit's had this ability for a long time. After fooling around with about 15 different FTP apps for the last year, Transmit is the best. Transmit still has some limitations (like stopping when it runs into an icon) but overall, is much better than other applications.

---
-mahuti



[ Reply to This | # ]
Fugu: A nice graphical front-end to sftp and more...
Authored by: osxpounder on Feb 09, '04 11:25:14AM

I don't mind that, since I didn't think much of Transmit's interface in the first place.

---
--
osxpounder



[ Reply to This | # ]
Transmit is the the only ripoff
Authored by: daveschroeder on Feb 09, '04 02:54:12PM

Transmit is by far not the first to use that paradigm for display of local and remote systems, and will not be the last.

Fugu is very capable, is ridiculously faster than Transmit, and, best of all, is completely free.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Uses my ssh keys and ssh "aliases"
Authored by: Don Faulkner on Feb 09, '04 11:21:49AM

I haven't tried transmit yet, but I really like the way this software uses my SSH public/private keypairs automatically.

I'm using the excellent SSHKeychain application, so my keys are available immediately after login. I can launch Fugu and tell it to connect to 'foobar' (or whatever) and it does two nice things:
1. It looks up 'foobar' in my .ssh/config file
2. It logs in using the key in my SSH Keychain agent.

Effectively, I just type 'foobar' and I'm in. Very nice. The only thing that would improve this is if Fugu read my config file and displayed my various 'aliased' hosts for me, without having to recreate favorites.

I guess I'll send them an email, then go try transmit...



[ Reply to This | # ]
Fugu: A nice graphical front-end to sftp and more...
Authored by: repetty on Feb 09, '04 12:06:41PM

Sorry, without a date column in the file listings this application is not merely unworthy of recommendation, it's downright dangerous.

It's way, way, way too easy to accidentally nuke an incorrect version of a file, whether you mean to backload a new version of a file or revert to an older one.

Also, I wrote to the development team using an email address on their web site and they didn't write back. Hey, developers, don't publish your email address if you aren't going to do your customers the courtesy of a response.

The best secure file transfer app out right now is MacSFTP. The best free secure file transfer app is CyberDuck <http://icu.unizh.ch/~dkocher/cyberduck/>

--Richard



[ Reply to This | # ]
Fugu: A nice graphical front-end to sftp and more...
Authored by: hamarkus on Feb 09, '04 12:44:27PM

Just for your information, they replied to me within 24 hours. And btw, if you go to 'View', 'Columns' and enable 'Date Modified' you'll get a column with the date.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Fugu: A nice graphical front-end to sftp and more...
Authored by: ururk on Feb 09, '04 01:14:28PM

Sorry, but when I had an issue with it (it quit in Panther on launch), an email with the text from the crash log, and they responded with a new build (I believe...) within the day.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Maybe they didn't respond...
Authored by: daveschroeder on Feb 09, '04 02:56:44PM

...because you didn't know what you were talking about.

Fugu displays the dates on all directories and files just fine.

Also, all of the Research Systems UNIX Group is extremely responsive to email, active on lists, and very accessible.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Maybe they didn't respond...
Authored by: osxpounder on Feb 09, '04 04:33:44PM

Ah, but there must be something to this, because I just connected to a machine in the next room with FUGU, to move a certain folder I knew was there. It's the newest, so it should sort to either the bottom or top of a list, depending on what I choose.

Dates are displaying, but not properly. The folder I need is listed without the year, just the month and day, and that means it gets sorted in the midst of all other months of this year, but ... not in chronological order. Not alphabetical, either. Fugu sorts files from last December, then last October; after those appear my folder from this February, and, after that, a number of files that are listed with month, day AND year. All files except the February ones are from 2003 or earlier. This happens when I choose to sort "date descending" by clicking the Date column head in Fugu.

---
--
osxpounder



[ Reply to This | # ]
Yes, there seems to be a small bug
Authored by: hamarkus on Feb 09, '04 06:29:08PM

There is a small bug in Fugo but it is not as bad as you think. Fugo displayes the year, month and day if the date is older than one year, otherwise month, day and time, which kind of makes sense.
But if you sort by date, all files/folders older than one year are sorted in descending order, the younger files/folders in ascending order (or vice versa depending on which way your triangle is facing). That is slightly confusing, and it results in the newest files being always shown in the MIDDLE of the list at the boundary between the more-than-one-year-old-files/folders and the younger ones.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Fugu: A nice graphical front-end to sftp and more...
Authored by: g3cko on Feb 09, '04 01:16:46PM

i might not have the newest version, but it doesn't handle certain filenames (looking at my mp3 directory shows some weird names like crystal method - with no album name)



[ Reply to This | # ]
Fugu: A nice graphical front-end to sftp and more...
Authored by: g3cko on Feb 09, '04 02:05:46PM

i jsut filed a bug report, and teh authors got back to me, and are gonna fix the problem in the next version



[ Reply to This | # ]
SSH not FTP
Authored by: SeanAhern on Feb 09, '04 03:00:38PM

I'm sure most of you already know this, but I though I'd mention it so this is clear.

sftp uses ssh to transfer files, not ftp. sftp does not contact a remote ftp server. The interface it presents looks a lot like ftp, but the underlying work is being done by an ssh daemon.

Just so you know that you're not FTP'ing files around. And that you can't use sftp to download files from your favorite anonymous ftp site.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Transfering directories via sftp?
Authored by: hamarkus on Feb 09, '04 03:57:09PM

I would like to transfer whole directories via a secure connection, and what I've been told sftp does not support this. Is this correct and is there a way around it?
You see, I update maybe six files in different directories, and navigating to all these directories can be a pain, it is so much easier just to copy the whole website to the server (I mean, what are a few megabytes among friends, i.e. with broadband).

Or is the best solution to use the syncronize feature of clients like Transmit, which should work over sftp?



[ Reply to This | # ]
Transfering directories via sftp?
Authored by: escowles on Feb 09, '04 05:51:44PM

You should check out rsync -- it's the utility for transferring only the changes in the most efficient manner possible. Saves time and bandwidth. It can use ssh to secure the connection -- maybe that's what Transmit does...

There's a Aquafied front-end for it called RsyncX.

-Esme



[ Reply to This | # ]
I've switched from Fugu
Authored by: trinitrotoluene on Feb 10, '04 02:49:11AM

Used to use Fugu in my lab, but now use Cyberduck as it supports regular FTP for those still stuck using it. I do have SFTP as default though. Anyways, Cyberduck is a nice GPL'ed app that is worth checking out.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Fugu: A nice graphical front-end to sftp and more...
Authored by: tinker on Feb 14, '04 04:34:08PM

This is a nice piece of work -- it plays well with SSHKeychain, which MacSFTP doesn't, so I can authenticate really quickly. The only gripe I have (suggestion for developers!) is that, although you can set SFTP defaults in preferences, you can't do the same for SCP. I don't know about you, but for the most part when I do SCP I do it to a single "drop box" so that I know where to go and sort things out later. When I SFTP, though, I could be going anywhere. So an SCP default would actually be more useful.



[ Reply to This | # ]