Subject: Ftp-WG: Suggestion - blank userid in FTP URLs.

From: Alun Jones <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2002 13:59:41 -0500

I get a lot of requests from users for the ability to "pop up a user / 
password dialog box".  Obviously, this isn't anything to do with my 
server's implementation which, like other servers, _always_ greets with a 
220, and responds to a USER command by asking for a PASS command.  On a 
little investigation, it turns out to be a direct result of the FTP URLs (a 
pain in themselves), and the fact that there is currently no generic URL to 
say that the browser's user must be prompted for user name and password.

I've given this only light consideration, and wonder if something like 
"ftp://@sitename" or "ftp://:@sitename" might be a good start - or perhaps 
"ftp://?@sitename".  The first two obviously conflict with RFC 1739's 
statement that these specify an empty username and/or password.  The second 
requires, essentially, that no user on any FTP server have the name "?", or 
that it should be escaped, something that potentially could cause 
backwards-compatibility issues.

So, since these have some problems, can anyone suggest a form of generic 
FTP URL that could be used to say that the browser must ask its user for a 
name as well as a password?  Or are the problems I've described simply too 
insignificant, and one of the above should be adopted?

Alun.
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From: "D. J. Bernstein" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 12 Oct 2002 16:29:29 -0500

Alun Jones writes:
> there is currently no generic URL to 

I don't understand. Why would anyone want a URL like that? Do you also
want URLs that prompt for the file name? Is this supposed to be some
sort of crude substitute for HTTP-based forms?

---D. J. Bernstein, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics,
Statistics, and Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago

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From: Alun Jones <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 12 Oct 2002 20:03:05 -0500

>sort of crude substitute for HTTP-based forms?

Funnily enough, it never occurred to me to ask why the customers wanted a 
URL like that.  It just didn't seem like that crazy of a request to make.

Perhaps it's for auditing access to a file that is shared between several 
users?  So that you could use a web page that read something like 
"ftp://??@mysite/sharedfile.zip", and have a log of which of your users 
downloaded the file.

Alun.
~~~~

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From: "D. J. Bernstein" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 12 Oct 2002 23:41:34 -0500

Alun Jones writes:
> Perhaps it's for auditing access to a file that is shared between
> several users?

Give the users a single shared FTP username with different passwords.
Audit by password. No need to revise the FTP URL semantics.

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From: "Fastream Technologies" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2002 06:33:47 -0500

Hello,

Being the author of 200,000 client FTP client and server, I wonder if there
is any particular reason ofr IETF to not include a command like the old
Deltree command to FTP standard that does the traversing the contents and
removing the sub directories/files of a directory on the server side?

I think most of today's servers are powerful enough for such an operation
support. What do you think?

G. I. Ates
Fastream Technologies
http://fastream.com

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From: "Teodor Angeloff" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2002 07:24:04 -0500

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