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FTP no longer works reliably as a protocol due to changes in the way networks are managed (it doesn't pass through firewalls well). Possible alternatives for transferring files:
The web server can provide a more convenient way to transfer files than FTP (especially as we no longer support non-anonymous ftp).
You can place the file(s) to be shared in the public_html directory of your unix account, and either create a link to it, or simply e-mail the recipient to let them know the name. You can also create symbolic links within public_html to other directories - the web server will follow them as long as the directory ownership matches.
The files can then be downloaded it from http://www.physics.umn.edu/~yourname/filename
If there are many files involved, there are a few possibilities to make the download easier.
wget tool to do a bulk download. The following command will download all files in your myfolder directory:wget -nd -r -l 1 http://webusers.physics.umn.edu/~username/myfolder/
If you choose this approach, you might also place the following lines in a .htaccess file within the download dirctory:
IndexOptions -FancyIndexing
IndexIgnore . ..
This will make the file listing simpler (so wget doesn't download any filename thumbnail images) and supress the parent directory.