UnoTransfer
Move files between this machine and another one. Two panes side by side - a UnoDOS volume on the left, a remote server on the right - and a queue that carries whole folders across without you watching it.
UnoTransfer is in the Start menu as UnoTransfer. It speaks several transfer protocols through one interface, so copying a folder off a web server and copying it off a Linux box over SSH are the same three actions with a different address typed in.
The window
The window has four tabs: Sites, the connections you have saved and the editor that makes a new one; Transfer, the two panes; Queue; and Terminal.
In the Transfer tab the left pane is always a volume on this machine. The right pane is wherever you connected to. Tab moves between them, the arrow keys move within one, and Enter opens a folder. Choosing a file or a folder and pressing the copy key puts a job on the queue that copies it to the other side, recursively, creating folders as it goes. A file arrives under a temporary name and takes its real one only once it is complete, so a transfer that stops halfway never leaves a truncated file looking like the real thing.
The Queue tab lists every job: what it is copying, how far along it is and what went wrong if anything did. Jobs run one file at a time and keep going while you use the rest of the window, and a slow server never holds up the desktop.
What it can connect to
| Protocol | What it is for | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Local | Copying between two UnoDOS volumes | Both panes can be local |
| SCP | Any machine you can reach over SSH | Uses the same saved sessions and keys as the SSH client |
| HTTP / HTTPS | Fetching a file by its URL | Download only, and no folder listing - a web server does not offer one |
| WebDAV / WebDAVS | A file server that speaks WebDAV | Lists, uploads, downloads and creates folders |
| TFTP | Small transfers on a local network, usually to equipment | No listing and no delete: the protocol has neither |
The terminal tab
An SCP connection is an SSH connection, so UnoTransfer also gives you a terminal on the machine you connected to. It is a real VT100/xterm emulator rather than a log window, so a full-screen program that draws its own interface works in it.
Transferring without touching the machine
UnoTransfer is also reachable through UnoDOS's remote-control channel as the xfer
command, which is how a script on another computer tells this one to fetch something. The important
part is that the file does not travel over the control channel: UnoDOS is told where
the file is and goes and gets it itself, straight from the machine that has it. See
Remote control & automation.
What it does not do yet
- SFTP is not available. The connection type exists but the layer underneath it does not offer it yet, so UnoTransfer offers SCP instead - the same job, over the same SSH connection, to the same machine.
- One very large file may not fit. A file is staged in memory as it arrives, because the filesystem underneath can only write a file whole. The staging area is about 8 MB by default and adjustable, and a folder of ordinary files of any total size copies fine - it is a single file bigger than the staging area that fails. Streaming is waiting on one change further down in the filesystem code, and the app reports which mode it is in.
- No resuming. An interrupted transfer starts that file again.
- No pasting a web page's address and picking a quality. UnoTransfer fetches a URL that is already a file. It is not a media downloader.
- One window. Like the browser and the SSH client, it is a single window with a single connection rather than tabs.