Ftp-WG: mdtm and mlsd commands

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 protected]]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=20
    From:        "Anthony R. Gold" <[email protected]>
    Message-ID:  <[email protected]>

  | 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