FTAM/9000 User's Guide

38 Chapter 2

Using Interactive FTAM

Streamlining ftam with a Startup File

You can have ftam skip the password request and automatically set up a

connection to a remote host. To automate your ftam connections, you

create an FTAM “startup” ﬁle (called .ftamrc ) in your home directory.

This ﬁle contains login information for speciﬁc remote hosts.

Once login information is available in .ftamrc, ftam does not prompt you

for passwords during connection establishment. This feature can be

useful if you routinely use ftam with particular remote hosts, or use

programs that need to perform ftam operations unattended.

NOTE FTAM startup ﬁles are discussed in more detail in Chapter 4, “Special

FTAM Files.”

The following example illustrates using automatic remote login. Note

that an entry in .ftamrc has this basic form:

machine host_name login user_name [password user_pass] [account

account_name]

A startup ﬁle can contain multiple entries like this. Each one identiﬁes a

remote host, and a valid user name on that host. A startup ﬁle provides

FTAM with customized default information for your convenience.

When you start an ftam session, it scans the startup ﬁle looking for the

host name you speciﬁed. The information in the ﬁrst entry that matches

becomes the default information for the login sequence.

You can accept the default by pressing [Enter]; ftam then uses the

password from that entry to log in to the remote. Also, you can specify a

different user name at the Username prompt. If the startup ﬁle has an

entry for that user on the speciﬁed host, ftam uses the password from

that entry to access the remote.

CAUTION A startup ﬁle that contains password information is a potential security

hazard . This may be an unacceptable risk in some situations. In such

cases, startup ﬁles should not contain password information.