Re: [ftpext] Soliciting comments/reviews on draft-yevstifeyev-ftp-uri-scheme

Daniel Stenberg <daniel@haxx.se> Sun, 22 May 2011 17:58 UTC

Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 19:45:44 +0200
From: Daniel Stenberg <daniel@haxx.se>
To: Mykyta Yevstifeyev <evnikita2@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <4DD89A18.3090105@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1105221515140.5566@tvnag.unkk.fr>
References: <4DD89A18.3090105@gmail.com>
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Cc: "uri-review@ietf.org" <uri-review@ietf.org>, ftpext@ietf.org
Subject: Re: [ftpext] Soliciting comments/reviews on draft-yevstifeyev-ftp-uri-scheme
Precedence: list

On Sun, 22 May 2011, Mykyta Yevstifeyev wrote:

> I'm writing to ask people to comment my draft 
> draft-yevstifeyev-ftp-uri-scheme, that may be found here:

Hi

I think the document looks fine and basically repeats what RFC1738 says. It 
would be really helpful if it would mention where or how it differs from 
RFC1738.

My concern is "The <ftp-path> Part", section 2.2.3, and the problems aren't 
really introduced by you but repeating existing problems in a brand new 
document seems a bit unnecessary.

The original problem I have with this exists already in RFC1738 as it mandates 
a CWD command for each <cwd> part of the path. There are lots of servers out 
in the wild who are configured to not allow this, but yet allows the client to 
do a single CWD to the entire path. That means "CWD dir1/dir2" works while 
"CWD dir1" fails. We can of course just consider such servers as non-compliant 
but clients may still need to consider this (and I know lots of clients only 
do the CWD <full path> approach).

The next problem in the same section is what to do with empty <cwd> parts. As 
in "ftp://example.com/path1//path2". RFC1738 acknowledges that the <cwd> parts 
may be empty. It continues to say that each <cwd> should result as an argument 
to CWD. But lots of FTP servers will treat "CWD" with a blank argument similar 
to what unix machines does with 'cd' without a directory: it changes directory 
to a pre-determined location (home directory) that certainly is not at all 
what the client wants for this. A "normal" FTP client will therefore not issue 
a separate CWD for empty parts.

In draft-yevstifeyev-ftp-uri-scheme there's no mention of the fact that <cwd> 
can be empty (which isn't really solving how to deal with them) but there's a 
similar mention that each <cwd> should be passed on to CWD.

-- 

  / daniel.haxx.se

[ftpext] Soliciting comments/reviews on draft-yev… Mykyta Yevstifeyev
Re: [ftpext] Soliciting comments/reviews on draft… Daniel Stenberg
Re: [ftpext] Soliciting comments/reviews on draft… Mykyta Yevstifeyev
Re: [ftpext] Soliciting comments/reviews on draft… John C Klensin
Re: [ftpext] Soliciting comments/reviews on draft… Mykyta Yevstifeyev
Re: [ftpext] Soliciting comments/reviews on draft… Daniel Stenberg
Re: [ftpext] Soliciting comments/reviews on draft… John C Klensin
Re: [ftpext] Soliciting comments/reviews on draft… Mykyta Yevstifeyev
Re: [ftpext] Soliciting comments/reviews on draft… Peter Saint-Andre
Re: [ftpext] Soliciting comments/reviews on draft… Mykyta Yevstifeyev