Running Linux, Third Edition

Sending and Receiving Files

Most communications programs invoke rz and sz automatically. You can also connect to a remote system, log in, and manually invoke sz with the flags you want to use. Zmodem automatically downloads the files to your home system using the same filenames. (Zmodem tools aren’t clever about filenames, so when you download to MS-DOS, be careful about getting files with names that can’t be squeezed into the filename.ext DOS filename limit. If you transfer filename.extension, it arrives on your DOS host converted to filename.ext, which is probably OK. But, if you try to transfer filename.more.extension, most Zmodem utilities will give up, probably with a misleading message that the transfer completed.)

One of the most confusing things about Zmodem transfer is determining the command to use to perform the transfer. You have to remember which system you are invoking the command from and which system contains the files to transfer. A consistent way to perform Zmodem transfer is to always invoke the transfer on the remote host, whether uploading (sending to the remote host) or downloading (receiving from the remote host). For example, if you are logged in to a remote host (using C-Kermit, or Telix, or whatever) and want to send some text files from that system to your home system, you might enter something like this:

$ sz -a *.txt

sz would queue the files and successively send them back to the local system. The -a option stands for ASCII and ensures that carriage returns ...