automate ftp across multiple platforms.

[datadan]

I am trying to automate uploads into an Apache website from NT and Novell locations on our internal network.

So far I gather I need to
Create a cron job that loads every x number of minutes/hours.

Some other questions arise:
1) If the file is "in use" or "open" how will the FTP program know to skip it?
2) How can I configure the messaging for why the transfer may have failed.
2) How to I get to the other platforms (They are on the same network) when I only have an IP address?
3) How will linux authenticate with the other users. (Will it try to log on as root or can I configure what the login will be?)
4) Are there any linux programs that already do this?

Thank you for your help.

[YaRness]

do you want a program on the web server to retrieve (download) files from multiple machines, or do you want multiple machines to send (upload) files to the web server?

do you want to use FTP or access files through shared drives, or both, or something else?

for a start i know in perl there are lots of modules (cpan.org) that are sometimes designed to work on multiple platforms with the same function/object calls. prolly true for other languages as well. so you would just hafta write one script that can be used on different OSes.

[datadan]

Sorry, I'll be more specific.

I would like my Webserver to pull information from the network locations.
so my server 192.2.2.50 will open an FTP stuff from specific locations on (Novell Machine)192.2.3.2/html/stuff and (NT Machine)192.2.4.3/html/stuff.

[YaRness]

so you'd need to set up an ftp server on each machine (will prolly need different pieces of software, or at least different versions for each platform), configure file locations and stuff for each of them, and make a script on the web server that has the login/password/ip for each machine, and what files to get.

how the ftp server on each machine will figure out if the file is in use will depend on the ftp software, how the OS handles sharing of files (or how it handles sharing the files you want), etc.

[Ig0r]

About checking files in use...
You might want to try grep'ing the output of lsof for the filename you want to check, or even using sed to get details.