[TriLUG] Scheduling file transfers

[Mark Freeze]

A year or so ago I had a problem downloading a file via ftp onto a
Windows box with WS_FTP.  The file was about 100MB and I started
downloading the file while my customer was still uploading, so I only
got about half of the file.  WS_FTP allowed me to do this with no
error. (Which I thought was kinda crazy.)

Now I have an offsite ftp spot that my customers use to send me files
at random times during the day. I want to automatically download and
process these files onto my box as soon as they appear on the site so
I was thinking that I would scehedule up a cron job to look for these
files every 10 min. When I do this am I going to have the problem of
seeing the file and trying to get it as they are uploading?  Some of
these files are over 100MB and might take my customer a while to
upload.  Someone told me to make sure that I have exclusive access to
the file before I download it, but since I have no control over the
ftp server I'm not sure on how to accomplish that task.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Mark.