From ftp-wg-owner@hethmon.com Mon Jan 1 10:02:22 2001 Received: from mail.hethmon.com ([208.147.156.32]) by ietf.org (8.9.1a/8.9.1a) with SMTP id KAA27362 for ; Mon, 1 Jan 2001 10:02:22 -0500 (EST) Received: from mail (mail.hethmon.com [208.147.156.32]) by mail.hethmon.com (Hethmon Brothers Smtpd) id 20010101100454-62594-9 ; Mon, 01 Jan 2001 10:04:54 -0500 Received: from rubellite.lion-access.net (rubellite.lion-access.net [212.19.217.4]) by mail.hethmon.com (Hethmon Brothers Smtpd) id 20010101100449-18934-8 ; Mon, 01 Jan 2001 10:04:50 -0500 Received: from xtreme (1Cust8.tnt26.rtm1.nl.uu.net [213.116.146.8]) by rubellite.lion-access.net (I-Lab) with SMTP id 56A0C28B1; Mon, 1 Jan 2001 14:58:46 +0000 (GMT) "Enum WG (E-mail)" , "FTPEXT WG (E-mail)" , "IDR WG (E-mail)" , "IPng WG (E-mail)" , "IPTel WG (E-mail)" , "Kerberos WG (E-mail)" , "Lynx-Dev (E-mail)" , "NAT WG (E-mail)" , "OSPF WG (E-mail)" , "WebDAV WG (E-mail)" , "WREC WG (E-mail)" , "WWW WG (E-mail)" Message-ID: <000701c07403$aa00d8c0$01ff1fac@Joris2K.local> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook CWS, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 Date: Mon, 1 Jan 2001 10:04:52 -0500 X-OldDate: Mon, 1 Jan 2001 16:01:04 +0100 Sender: ftp-wg-owner X-Listname: ftp-wg@hethmon.com Reply-To: FTPEXT Working Group From: "Joris Dobbelsteen" To: "6Bone (E-mail)" <6Bone@isi.edu> Subject: Ftp-WG: Happy new year Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To all WGs I'm subscribed to, nobody does it, so I'll just send it: Happy new year and a good start of the new millennium Hope I can say this for all members of the WGs... - Joris From ftp-wg-owner@hethmon.com Tue Jan 2 21:51:37 2001 Received: from mail.hethmon.com (mail.hethmon.com [208.147.156.32]) by ietf.org (8.9.1a/8.9.1a) with SMTP id VAA26057 for ; Tue, 2 Jan 2001 21:51:37 -0500 (EST) Received: from mail (mail.hethmon.com [208.147.156.32]) by mail.hethmon.com (Hethmon Brothers Smtpd) id 20010102215412-60214-9 ; Tue, 02 Jan 2001 21:54:12 -0500 Received: from warp.hethmon.com (warp.hethmon.com [208.147.156.3]) by mail.hethmon.com (Hethmon Brothers Smtpd) id 20010102215409-33302-8 ; Tue, 02 Jan 2001 21:54:09 -0500 Message-Id: <20010102215409-33302-8@mail.hethmon.com> X-Mailer: PMMail 2.10.1999 for OS/2 Warp 4.05 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Tue, 2 Jan 2001 21:54:10 -0500 X-OldDate: Tue, 02 Jan 2001 21:55:20 -0500 () Sender: ftp-wg-owner X-Listname: ftp-wg@hethmon.com Reply-To: FTPEXT Working Group From: "Paul Hethmon" To: "ftp-wg@hethmon.com" Subject: Ftp-WG: Fwd: Help in Addressing a Unique Problem Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ==================BEGIN FORWARDED MESSAGE================== >Return-Path: Russell_Pittman@mail.waii.com >Received: from diamond.waii.com (diamond.waii.com [198.3.192.201]) by mail.hethmon.com > (Hethmon Brothers Smtpd) id 20001211155327-596-8 ; Mon, 11 Dec 2000 15:53:27 -0500 >Received: from mail1.wg.waii.com (mail.wg.waii.com [137.144.170.17]) > by diamond.waii.com (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id OAA15303 > for ; Mon, 11 Dec 2000 14:48:33 -0600 (CST) >From: Russell_Pittman@mail.waii.com >Received: from clntgw1.wg.waii.com (clntgw1.wg.waii.com [137.144.136.99]) > by mail1.wg.waii.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id OAA50856 > for ; Mon, 11 Dec 2000 14:48:32 -0600 >Received: by clntgw1.wg.waii.com(Lotus SMTP MTA v4.6.4 (830.2 3-23-1999)) id 862569B2.00711566 ; Mon, 11 Dec 2000 14:35:10 -0600 >X-Lotus-FromDomain: GUESTNET >To: phethmon@hethmon.com >Message-ID: <862569B2.0071140D.00@clntgw1.wg.waii.com> >Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000 14:35:04 -0600 >Subject: Help in Addressing a Unique Problem >Mime-Version: 1.0 >Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii >Content-Disposition: inline > Dear Mr. Hethmon, Please let me introduce myself, my name is Russ Pittman and I am Director of Engineering for SpaceData International. While I am not in the habit of "cold-calling" via email, it seems that my company is having a very hard time finding a FTP program to fit our needs nor are we successful in finding any one person that can help with a solution to our problem. We have been told, "Can't help you" or "Too busy" by several companies specializing in FTP software. I understand that you are the Working Group Chair for FTPEXT. This being the case, I am approaching those like yourself for any sort of recommendation to secure consulting services for OUR ftp application. We want to develop or modify a UNIX based FTP program to work over satellite with our newly developed services for high speed data transfer. We have successfully transferred over 4 Terabytes of information over satellite using NCFTP, but feel the performance can be taylored to improve our transfer times. Right now we are in test phase and approaching 310 mbs over satellite suspecting our FTP software is not configured best for our application. Can you suggest a company or an individual that could help us? Very best regards, Russ Pittman Director of Engineering SpaceData International rpittman@spacedata-int.com 305 345 9300 Voice 305 245 4921 Fax I can temporarily be reached at: (713) 689 1807 ===================END FORWARDED MESSAGE=================== Paul Hethmon phethmon@hethmon.com http://www.hethmon.com From ftp-wg-owner@hethmon.com Tue Jan 30 21:06:54 2001 Received: from mail.hethmon.com (mail.hethmon.com [208.171.56.195]) by ietf.org (8.9.1a/8.9.1a) with SMTP id VAA20292 for ; Tue, 30 Jan 2001 21:06:53 -0500 (EST) Received: from mail.hethmon.com ([208.171.56.195] [208.171.56.195]) by mail.hethmon.com (Hethmon Brothers Smtpd) id 20010130210920-55226-9 ; Tue, 30 Jan 2001 21:09:20 -0500 Received: from warp.hethmon.com ([208.171.56.198] [208.171.56.198]) by mail.hethmon.com (Hethmon Brothers Smtpd) id 20010130210915-32589-8 ; Tue, 30 Jan 2001 21:09:16 -0500 Message-Id: <20010130210915-32589-8@mail.hethmon.com> X-Mailer: PMMail 2.10.1999 for OS/2 Warp 4.05 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 21:09:17 -0500 X-OldDate: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 21:12:02 -0500 () Sender: ftp-wg-owner X-Listname: ftp-wg@hethmon.com Reply-To: FTPEXT Working Group From: Trevin Beattie To: ftp-wg@hethmon.com Subject: Ftp-WG: LIST vs. NLST Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I have recently run into a problem with the interpretation of RFC-959. The authors of wu-ftpd claim that NLST should restrict its list to regular files and exclude directories and symbolic links. However, the only place I could find in the RFC's which distinguish directories from regular files is in RFC-1127, which indirectly claims that including directories in NLST output is a "bug". And this statement is listed under "Proposed FTP extensions"; it is not part of an actual standard. In RFC-959, the ONLY distinction made between NLST and LIST is that NLST must return a machine-readable list of names, while LIST may return a human-readable list. This follows BSD's implementation of the ftp client, where the "dir" command is documented to print a listing of the contents of a directory including "any system-dependent information that the server chooses to include". Apparently the wu-ftp folks have interpreted "names of files" under NLST to mean names of regular files. But if you read the paragraph under LIST, it uses similar wording, "list of files". Neither paragraph mentions "regular files" or "symbolic links". And remember than on unix-like systems, directories and symbolic links ARE files, just files of a special type. Many RFC's prior to 959 have urged the network community to clarify the distinction between LIST and NLST. Following is the complete list of additions to the description of these two commands: Under LIST, change "If the pathname specifies a directory" to "If the pathname specifies a directory or other group of files", and add the following sentence: "Since the information on a file may vary widely from system to system, this information may be hard to use automatically in a program, but may be quite useful to a human user." Under NLST, add the following sentence: "This command is intended to return information that can be used by a program to further process the files automatically. For example, in the implementation of a "multiple get" function." As a side note to the last sentence, there are other ways an ftp client can use both regular file and directory names in NLST, for example tab-completion of filenames and expanding "mget" functionality to recursively get files in subdirectories. (I have seen the latter already implemented in one ftp client.) ----------------------- Trevin Beattie "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, trevin@xmission.com for you are crunchy and good with ketchup." {:-> --unknown Paul Hethmon phethmon@hethmon.com http://www.hethmon.com From ftp-wg-owner@hethmon.com Wed Jan 31 01:08:26 2001 Received: from mail.hethmon.com (mail.hethmon.com [208.171.56.195]) by ietf.org (8.9.1a/8.9.1a) with SMTP id BAA24328 for ; Wed, 31 Jan 2001 01:08:25 -0500 (EST) Received: from mail.hethmon.com ([208.171.56.195] [208.171.56.195]) by mail.hethmon.com (Hethmon Brothers Smtpd) id 20010131011038-11713-9 ; Wed, 31 Jan 2001 01:10:38 -0500 Received: from mail.vr.net ([205.133.13.8] [205.133.13.8]) by mail.hethmon.com (Hethmon Brothers Smtpd) id 20010131011034-33397-8 ; Wed, 31 Jan 2001 01:10:35 -0500 Received: (from lundberg@localhost) by mail.vr.net (8.10.1/8.10.1) id f0V65F625653 for ftp-wg@hethmon.com; Wed, 31 Jan 2001 01:05:15 -0500 Message-ID: <20010131010514.B24221@vr.net> References: <20010130210915-32589-8@mail.hethmon.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <20010130210915-32589-8@mail.hethmon.com>; from trevin@xmission.com on Tue, Jan 30, 2001 at 09:09:17PM -0500 Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 01:10:35 -0500 X-OldDate: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 01:05:14 -0500 Sender: ftp-wg-owner X-Listname: ftp-wg@hethmon.com Reply-To: FTPEXT Working Group From: Gregory A Lundberg To: FTPEXT Working Group Subject: Ftp-WG: LIST vs. NLST We made the change to allow commands in widely deployed clients to work. Specifically, there's been a long-standing complaint that mget will fail because NLST returns non-gettable objects (directories). 959 specifically states NLST is for use by automata, mentioning mget specifically. It turns out that some vendors consider humans automata, and use NLST as the default for human-readable output. Most notable of these is Sun, which uses NLST in an attempt to add pathname completion to an FTP session much like you normally see with command-line shell access. If it's a problem for your site, there is a patch available (which will be a config option in the next version) which will allow you to break some clients in favor of others. -- Gregory A Lundberg Senior Partner, VRnet Company 1441 Elmdale Drive lundberg@vr.net Kettering, OH 45409-1615 USA 1-800-809-2195 From ftp-wg-owner@hethmon.com Wed Jan 31 01:49:16 2001 Received: from mail.hethmon.com (mail.hethmon.com [208.171.56.195]) by ietf.org (8.9.1a/8.9.1a) with SMTP id BAA28401 for ; Wed, 31 Jan 2001 01:49:15 -0500 (EST) Received: from mail.hethmon.com ([208.171.56.195] [208.171.56.195]) by mail.hethmon.com (Hethmon Brothers Smtpd) id 20010131015157-21517-9 ; Wed, 31 Jan 2001 01:51:57 -0500 Received: from ratree.psu.ac.th ([192.100.77.3] [192.100.77.3]) by mail.hethmon.com (Hethmon Brothers Smtpd) id 20010131015151-62406-8 ; Wed, 31 Jan 2001 01:51:53 -0500 Received: from brandenburg.cs.mu.OZ.AU ([203.154.130.253]) by ratree.psu.ac.th (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id NAA05952 for ; Wed, 31 Jan 2001 13:45:39 +0700 (ICT) Received: from brandenburg.cs.mu.OZ.AU (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by brandenburg.cs.mu.OZ.AU (8.11.0/8.11.0) with ESMTP id f0V6lIf03756 for ; Wed, 31 Jan 2001 13:47:27 +0700 (ICT) In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 30 Jan 2001 21:09:17 EST." <20010130210915-32589-8@mail.hethmon.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Message-ID: <3754.980923638@brandenburg.cs.mu.OZ.AU> Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 01:51:54 -0500 X-OldDate: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 13:47:18 +0700 Sender: ftp-wg-owner X-Listname: ftp-wg@hethmon.com Reply-To: FTPEXT Working Group From: Robert Elz To: FTPEXT Working Group Subject: Ftp-WG: LIST vs. NLST Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 21:09:17 -0500 From: Trevin Beattie Message-ID: <20010130210915-32589-8@mail.hethmon.com> | I have recently run into a problem with the interpretation of RFC-959. This was also asked on the NetBSD list, here's a copy of the reply I sent there... Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 12:48:28 -0800 From: Trevin Beattie Message-ID: <3.0.32.20010130124825.00683d58@clay.wh.ca.us> | I have recently run into a problem with the interpretation of RFC-959. | The authors of wu-ftpd claim that NLST should restrict its list to | regular files and exclude directories and symbolic links. That's wrong. Or more correctly, an FTP server can return whatever it likes for any of the listing commands - FTP provides a virtual filestore, it doesn't have to represent anything that actually exists if it doesn't want to. So the "should" is incorrect, there's no such requirement. But restricting it that way isn't necessarily wrong either. | In the official standard, RFC-959, the ONLY distinction made between | NLST and LIST is that NLST must return a machine-readable list of | names, while LIST may return a human-readable list. Yes. | NetBSD Problem Report #8937 has suggested changing the implementation | of ftp to make "dir" and "ls" both use LIST. I believe this is a | mistake, as it removes the distinction between the commands. NLST output is intended for machine processing, returning it (raw) to the user is a dumb idea. The "ls" and "dir" came about because unix users naturally like to use "ls", whereas most ftp clients pre unix had used "dir" as their command for the similar function (those other OS's...). So, both were included. They're not supposed to be different (that some version of the unix client somewhere along the way changed "ls" to use "NLST" was a truly brain dead idea). Things got worse as servers tended to just run /bin/ls to implement these commands, passing whatever arg the user passed, so running "ls -lrt" from the client would cause the server to run "/bin/ls -lrt" the output of which was just dumped to the user's screen, which made things look very clean to your average unix user. Try that on a non-unix server though and it wouldn't do at all what you expect (except those faked to pretend to be unix, which actually look to see if you're passing unix style flags as the arg ... the lengths to which some implementors will go...) The only defined arg to the LIST/NLST commands is the file to list, there are, or should be, no "flags". In the future, clients will be able to use MLST and then generate different output formats suitable for the client environment, based upon the command they were given, and the information returned from the server (There are already servers, including NetBSD's, that support it). kre From ftp-wg-owner@hethmon.com Wed Jan 31 01:53:17 2001 Received: from mail.hethmon.com (mail.hethmon.com [208.171.56.195]) by ietf.org (8.9.1a/8.9.1a) with SMTP id BAA28740 for ; Wed, 31 Jan 2001 01:53:17 -0500 (EST) Received: from mail.hethmon.com ([208.171.56.195] [208.171.56.195]) by mail.hethmon.com (Hethmon Brothers Smtpd) id 20010131015551-20542-16 ; Wed, 31 Jan 2001 01:55:51 -0500 Received: from ratree.psu.ac.th ([192.100.77.3] [192.100.77.3]) by mail.hethmon.com (Hethmon Brothers Smtpd) id 20010131015527-25051-11 ; Wed, 31 Jan 2001 01:55:48 -0500 Received: from brandenburg.cs.mu.OZ.AU ([203.154.130.253]) by ratree.psu.ac.th (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id NAA06843 for ; Wed, 31 Jan 2001 13:49:57 +0700 (ICT) Received: from brandenburg.cs.mu.OZ.AU (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by brandenburg.cs.mu.OZ.AU (8.11.0/8.11.0) with ESMTP id f0V6pjf03772 for ; Wed, 31 Jan 2001 13:51:45 +0700 (ICT) In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 31 Jan 2001 01:10:35 EST." <20010131010514.B24221@vr.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Message-ID: <3770.980923905@brandenburg.cs.mu.OZ.AU> Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 01:55:49 -0500 X-OldDate: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 13:51:45 +0700 Sender: ftp-wg-owner X-Listname: ftp-wg@hethmon.com Reply-To: FTPEXT Working Group From: Robert Elz To: FTPEXT Working Group Subject: Ftp-WG: LIST vs. NLST Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 01:10:35 -0500 From: Gregory A Lundberg Message-ID: <20010131010514.B24221@vr.net> | It turns out that some vendors consider humans automata, and use NLST as | the default for human-readable output. That's dumb. | Most notable of these is Sun, which | uses NLST in an attempt to add pathname completion to an FTP session much | like you normally see with command-line shell access. But that's not, pathname completion is "automaton" work, not human work. Still, it is a little hard to see how it can work sanely, as from NLST (even when directories are included, which I would generally think they should be) you have no idea what is a directory, and what isn't. All this can be solved with MLST, which gives machine parseable listings with additional information (so the client can tell if the file is fetchable, and so use, or not use it with mget, and can tell if it is a directory or not, and so do intelligent path name completion). Does wu-ftpd support MLST yet? If not, could it soon? Getting that in most of the major servers on the net would certainly provide lots more motivation for clients to start using the command. kre From ftp-wg-owner@hethmon.com Wed Jan 31 02:24:57 2001 Received: from mail.hethmon.com (mail.hethmon.com [208.171.56.195]) by ietf.org (8.9.1a/8.9.1a) with SMTP id CAA07636 for ; Wed, 31 Jan 2001 02:24:56 -0500 (EST) Received: from mail.hethmon.com ([208.171.56.195] [208.171.56.195]) by mail.hethmon.com (Hethmon Brothers Smtpd) id 20010131022658-14004-9 ; Wed, 31 Jan 2001 02:26:58 -0500 Received: from mail.vr.net ([205.133.13.8] [205.133.13.8]) by mail.hethmon.com (Hethmon Brothers Smtpd) id 20010131022653-52906-8 ; Wed, 31 Jan 2001 02:26:53 -0500 Received: (from lundberg@localhost) by mail.vr.net (8.10.1/8.10.1) id f0V7LYs30027 for ftp-wg@hethmon.com; Wed, 31 Jan 2001 02:21:34 -0500 Message-ID: <20010131022134.A29916@vr.net> References: <20010131010514.B24221@vr.net> <3770.980923905@brandenburg.cs.mu.OZ.AU> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <3770.980923905@brandenburg.cs.mu.OZ.AU>; from kre@munnari.OZ.AU on Wed, Jan 31, 2001 at 01:55:49AM -0500 Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 02:26:55 -0500 X-OldDate: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 02:21:34 -0500 Sender: ftp-wg-owner X-Listname: ftp-wg@hethmon.com Reply-To: FTPEXT Working Group From: Gregory A Lundberg To: FTPEXT Working Group Subject: Ftp-WG: LIST vs. NLST > Does wu-ftpd support MLST yet? If not, could it soon? Getting that in > most of the major servers on the net would certainly provide lots more > motivation for clients to start using the command. My personal opinion: we're lucky it even supports 959 .. and that's only because it came from the old BSD sources. I'm sure someone could come up with some way to get MLST into the utter mess which is there. I, though, have put it on my list of things to do when I get back to doing a complete rewrite. -- Gregory A Lundberg Senior Partner, VRnet Company 1441 Elmdale Drive lundberg@vr.net Kettering, OH 45409-1615 USA 1-800-809-2195