Dennis Allison writes:

I wrote an External Method which generates an FTP script to download as source one of my sites. When I pass it to the FTP system it happily logs into Zope and starts the downloads, building the directory tree on the way. Part of the way through it dies on a "too many files" error. And a look at the transaction log says there were lots and lots of file errors.

I did not attept to do much of a handshake -- I just stream the commands into the ftp program

ftp -m <commands >>log

The commands manage the tree traversal and actions on both the source and the destination and follow the general pattern of

move to directory at the source create directory at destination (the local machine) mget * move to any subdirrectory (and repeat recursively)

Any idea why it bombs? workaround? Something forgets to close file descriptors...

Use the "lsof" Unix command ("list open files") to find out which file descriptors are leaking. It might be your FTP client. Dieter