Ftp-WG: draft-somers-ftp-mfxx-01

On 6 Feb 2004 at 9:54, Anthony R. Gold wrote:

> If it is true that the create time-val can sometimes be later/greater than
> the modify time-val, then perhaps something different should be said at
> 7.5.4 of http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ftpext-mlst-16.txt
> which now states: "About all that can be said about the value returned [by
> a query of creation fact] is that it can never indicate a later time than
> the modify fact."; indeed it was that comment, and the potential here for
> an inconsistency with it, which prompted my question.

I think this is an OS specific issue. What the underlying filesystem allows or not is 
more important. Maybe this condition makes sense for some OS we have not yet 
seen. 

The FTP server is probably not the best place to make this policy decision.

So, if you leave it up to the OS to allow or not, you will need some way of indicating 
an OS failure  in setting the mod time, or the create time, or both. I think the xxx 
return code should be encoded to indicate clearly which time value or option failed to 
be set, rather than leaving it to the expanatory text (unless for MFF you specify that 
the failed option name(s) will be listed)



-- 
Brad Clements,                [email protected]   (315)268-1000
http://www.murkworks.com                          (315)268-9812 Fax
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