How to recursively download a folder via FTP on Linux

ncftp -u <user> -p <pass> <server>
ncftp> mget directory

Just to complement the answer given by Thibaut Barrère.

I used

wget -r -nH --cut-dirs=5 -nc ftp://user:pass@server//absolute/path/to/directory

Note the double slash after the server name. If you don't put an extra slash the path is relative to the home directory of user.

• -nH avoids the creation of a directory named after the server name
• -nc avoids creating a new file if it already exists on the destination (it is just skipped)
• --cut-dirs=5 allows to take the content of /absolute/path/to/directory and to put it in the directory where you launch wget. The number 5 is used to filter out the 5 components of the path. The double slash means an extra component.

You could rely on wget which usually handles ftp get properly (at least in my own experience). For example:

wget -r ftp://user:[email protected]/

You can also use -m which is suitable for mirroring. It is currently equivalent to -r -N -l inf.

If you've some special characters in the credential details, you can specify the --user and --password arguments to get it to work. Example with custom login with specific characters:

wget -r --user="user@login" --password="Pa$$wo|^D" ftp://server.com/

As pointed out by @asmaier, watch out that even if -r is for recursion, it has a default max level of 5:

-r
--recursive
    Turn on recursive retrieving.

-l depth
--level=depth
    Specify recursion maximum depth level depth.  The default maximum depth is 5.

If you don't want to miss out subdirs, better use the mirroring option, -m:

-m
--mirror
    Turn on options suitable for mirroring.  This option turns on recursion and time-stamping, sets infinite
    recursion depth and keeps FTP directory listings.  It is currently equivalent to -r -N -l inf
    --no-remove-listing.

If lftp is installed on your machine, use mirror dir. And you are done. See the comment by Ciro below if you want to recursively download a directory.