Subject: Ftp-WG: mdtm and mlsd commands

From: "Mark Symons" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 10:50:49

The message below generated a couple of responses, and then the following from Anthony R. Gold:

> I wonder why the working group is ignoring an absent but
> apparently needed facility which software developers are
> now programming around in a common but, of necessity
> because of the lack of any standard, a non-compliant
> manner.

I think the answer to this is that no one was prepared to step up to the plate and actually do the work.  I have been involved with this workgroup for many years and have seen a lot of burnout.

Does anyone remember the HOST command that was in early versions of the MLST draft and then removed?  Well, it got removed not because it was bad but because it still needed work and was holding up MLST.  Gregory Lundberg massaged what had already been done and produced draft-ietf-ftpext-host-01.txt.  Some good stuff in there...  but nothing ever happened.

As for the mdtm issue, Robert Elz said the following to me way back in 1999:

> ... a method to set the mod time on an uploaded file is
> probably a useful facility to have, it is just that MDTM
> is not (really cannot be) the command to achieve that.

> If this is something that is believed to be common, it
> really needs to be brought up on the list, so we can
> see what ought be added to the draft to at least make
> known this behaviour.

To clarify the "added to the draft" bit, Robert wrote the following a couple of weeks later:

> I don't think so, that ought to be a new draft.   But
> it might be a good idea to stick a warning in this
> doc, with the spec for MDTM, indicating that some
> servers/clients think that they can supply two args
> to MDTM, and making it clear that this is incompatible
> with MLST (which requires that filenames with spaces
> be legal, if the server filesys allows them - the
> protocol certainly does).

The problem was that no one volunteered to produce a new draft.

Mark Symons
Ipswitch,Inc
Augusta GA

-----Original Message-----
From: ftp-wg-owner [mailto:[email-masked]]On Behalf Of Robert
Elz
Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2004 08:36
To: FTPEXT Working Group
Subject: Ftp-WG: mdtm and mlsd commands

    Date:        Sat, 24 Jan 2004 05:30:08 
    From:        "Anthony R. Gold" <[email-masked]>
    Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>

  | Is this list active?

Not very.

  | 2) Could someone explain to me the status of the mdtm command?

Perhaps.... Its definition should appear in an RFC sometime relatively
soon, we hope.

  | I've found both clients and servers which allow mdtm to be used to set the
  | modify-fact of files on servers, but I don't see that documented in any
  | RFC or proposal.

Anything that does that is broken, it is a query command only.  There
are no standardised "set attributes" command, for any attributes I'm
aware of (possibly excluding the name...)

  | Is this use of mdtm in any standard or in any proposal for standard?

No.

  | And if not, is there any standardized method for setting a
  | file's modify-fact?

Not that I know of.

  | 2) What is the status of the command "mlsd directory" in terms of a
  | standard or a track towards it?

It is approved as a proposed standard.   The RFC should appear soon
(for all WG members, the delay is while we're trying to work out the
best way of handling the over-long example lines in the draft - it is
likely now that the outcome of this will be the text format rfc missing
some of the examples, and a postscript format version with everything
included - not ideal, but anything else that remains correct, and meets
the rfc editor restrictions is going to take too long to accomplish).

kre

---

From: "Alun Jones" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 13:01:18

> From: ftp-wg-owner [mailto:[email-masked]] On 
> Behalf Of Mark Symons
> Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2004 10:51 AM
> 

I'd be tempted to say that Robert Oslin just did - but that would probably
lead to the wrong solution being put forward - the idea that we'd have MDTM
used as a modification command, as well as a query command, with the
possibility (though remote, not entirely impossible, or even unlikely on a
FAT file system)of confusion.

If it's going to be done, it needs to be more than just modification time
that gets altered - creation time might be a good one to work on, too.  Are
there any other facts that should be modified by a new command?  Perhaps
protections, though I _know_ that one's going to be a mess.

Alun.
~~~~
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---

From: Marc Huber <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 16:06:42

> protections, though I _know_ that one's going to be a mess.

Anybody remembering draft-somers-ftp-mfxx-00.txt? It's no longer
in the IETF drafts directory (it expired about one year ago), but
still available from

  http://www.trevezel.com/downloads/draft-somers-ftp-mfxx-00.txt

and IMHO it's in pretty good shape, almost ready for the IESG.

A copy-paste from the abstract:

   This document defines extensions to the FTP specification STD9,
   RFC959, "FILE TRANSFER PROTOCOL (FTP)".  These extensions provide the
   ability for a FTP Client to modify the last modification time, the
   creation time, or multiple facts (last modification time, creation
   time, operating system permissions, etc.) of a file in the server-FTP
   process NVFS.  These extensions are implemented by three new optional
   commands: "MFMT" (Modify File Modification Time), "MFCT" (Modify File
   Creation Time), and "MFF" (Modify File Facts).

Marc

---

From: "David Somers" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 18:55:30

> and IMHO it's in pretty good shape, almost ready for the IESG.

Thanks.

Yes, the document expired. (I got distracted with some other projects that
took priority).

There are a few minor changes that need to be made (yes Marc, I remember the
comments you sent me back in 2002!)... guess I should prepare the next draft
and get it out ASAP.

If anybody is interested, I have a demo server that implements these
commands for those that like to play... but it needs a bit of work (read:
more security!) before I can unleash it.

Cheers from Luxembourg,

David Somers