Bill Burcham’s memeRocket

I use Amazon S3 to store backups from EC2. For a while I’ve been thinking I ought to back up some of the S3 data once in a while but I’ve been putting it off. One reason I’ve been procrastinating is because the S3 “file” management tool I’ve been using, S3 Browser, doesn’t support simple things like deleting or downloading folders. You may delete a folder (=”bucket”) only if it’s empty. You may copy the files (=”objects”) in a folder but there is no convenient way to just copy the folder and all its contents at once.

When I saw the S3Fox Firefox extension a while back I was encouraged.  Unfortunately, S3Fox has some critical bugs on the Mac. In particular, folder downloads don’t work — apparently because S3Fox is using backslashes in destination paths a la Windows. You end up with empty folders on your Mac.

I was rescued from a serious bout of the crankies by Nolobe’s Interarchy. This Mac-only file transfer application apparently supports lots of protocol standards and lots of interesting automation features blah-blah-blah but what’s important to me is — it has S3 support!  Woo hoo!  So I downloaded the free 14 day trial and used it to browse my S3 buckets. In a nonce I had downloaded a couple hundred megabytes of precious machine images and subversion snapshots. Now they sit on my disk, ready for their final DVD resting place. I can sleep tonight.

Oh, and Interarchy is a lickable OS X app too. I have no idea yet if I’ll prefer it to Transmit (tall order) but for S3 work from the Mac it looks like a must-have.

I recently switched from Fugu to Cyberduck. At the time I considered moving to Panic’s Transmit but didn’t see how to get SSH certificate-based authentication to work.

Well, a nice person at Transmit support answered my question. Interestingly, while perhaps a little non-obvious to the SSH-non-initiate, the solution is actually elegant — do nothing. That’s right, Transmit works directly with the ssh command-line infrastructure. This means if you’ve got your identities (keys and certificates) stored in the ~/.ssh directory you’re good to go. Further, if you’re using an SSH Agent (like SSHKeychain) you’ll never even be prompted for a passphrase by Transmit.
While I like Cyberduck a lot, the edge goes to Transmit — even at a cost of $29.95. Here goes:

1. Transmit is snappier. I haven’t measured file transfer speeds, but directory listing and navigation is definitely snappier than Fugu or Cyberduck. I spend a lot of time navigating around remote filesystems and I don’t move a lot of great big files so reponse time for listings is crucial.
2. Transmit can be configured to edit a file on double click. In Cyberduck you have to select the file and hit command-j to edit it — annoying. Of course in any case, the file must be downloaded — but it’s downloaded to some mystery location where you don’t have to worry about cleaning it up.
3. Transmit supports column view (browser view) just like Finder. Cyberduck does offer a contextual view but it’s more of a Windows-style-double-click-a-folder-to-expand-subfolders affair. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

There are couple shortcomings worth mentioning too:

1. While Transmit offers tab support — innovative among the file transfer clients I’ve looked at — the workflow is a bit clumsy. If you have a configuration saved as a favorite there is no way to quickly and directly open it in a new tab. Instead you must go through four steps. How about an “open favorite in new tab” option in Preferences? Currently you must:
   1. open a new tab (command-t or via File menu)
   2. select the “favorites” tab within that new tab
   3. select the “Favorites” folder
   4. double-click the favorite you want

   On the upside — once you’ve done this once, Transmit remembers that you want the Location tab and the Favorites folder so the middle two steps drop out. Still, one step would be better than two steps.

2. When configuring a new connection for password authentication, Transmit won’t allow paste into password field — you have to type the password from the keyboard. I keep all my credentials in Keychain Access so it’s real easy to get ‘em on the clipboard. Minor one-time annoyance.

All in all I’m enjoying Transmit. It’s been reliable and comfortable. I’m off to pay my $29.95 now…

For those of you who like to keep your hands on the keyboard…

Control-tab will cycle to the next tab to the right (and wrap at the end).

Page-up and Page-down keys can be used to move to adjacent tabs in either direction (again, wrapping is in effect). Control-page-up (control-fn-page-up on laptop keyboards) moves left. Control-page-down (control-fn-page-down) moves right.