Subject: Ftp-WG: HOST command and client upgrades

From: "Jan Mikkelsen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 18:49:09 -0400

Alun Jones wrote:
>I do, however, like the idea of a separator, in that it allows the use of
>current ftp clients.  Unfortunately, it's going to be hard to find one that
>doesn't occur naturally in the wild in existing user names, and yet which
>can be entered into an old FTP client.

Put the hostname first:  It is well defined, unlike usernames.  Then the
actual delimiter matters much less.  Eg:
"blah.blah.blah.domain.com:[email-masked]:all$kinds\of/stuff", where ':' is
the delimiter.

Jan Mikkelsen

---

From: Alun Jones <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 20:12:35 -0400

>"blah.blah.blah.domain.com:[email-masked]:all$kinds\of/stuff", where ':' is

A thought struck me, that Americans would describe as a "Well, Duh!" moment.

user@host is just as acceptable as host@user.  You'll never see @ in host,
and host is the last part before the <CR><LF> delimiter.

Unfortunately, it still suffers the same problem - if you get
"[email-masked]", is that a request under the new scheme, or is it an old
username?  Perhaps it's not too difficult - it's almost certainly not going
to resolve both ways, so try whichever works, if you're in the transition
period.

Alun.
~~~~

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---

From: Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 21:28:47 -0400

Date:        Mon, 25 Oct 1999 20:12:35 -0400
    From:        Alun Jones <[email-masked]>
    Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>

  | Unfortunately, it still suffers the same problem - if you get
  | "[email-masked]", is that a request under the new scheme, or is it an old
  | username?

Does it matter?   That is, is there any way to actually tell the
difference (using the FTP protocol mechanisms as defined)?

I doubt there is, it is really all the same.

The problems with this approach is that you either have to mangle the
client to know to add the "@host" part (in which case using the HOST
command is better - as that one doesn't cause any problems for old servers
they just ignore the HOST command - they won't just ignore a part of the
username).   Or, you have to somehow convince the user to send the
user name part manually somehow (or instruct the client to do it using
existing mechanisms).   That's probably possible when the FTP command
comes from a URL, I suspect it isn't any other time.

In any case, all this discussion has pretty much convinced me that
the HOST command ought be removed from the mlst draft, so unless there
is substantial objection to that before the next draft is ready to
go, that is what will happen (and HOST will become a draft of its own).
The initial HOST draft will contain the same text as is in the current
mlst draft about host, with whatever changes the WG has decided upon
before then (except if we decide that we don't want the command at all,
in which case the draft will just never appear).

The next MLST draft should be soon after the IETF ends I think (once
drafts start being accepted again).   It will have examples taken from
non-unix servers (at least one, maybe more if I can find more).  I would
like that one to be the last in the mlst sequence, so if the WG can find
more places in the text which demonstrate my total lack of command of the
English language, please let us know asap.

kre