Re: [Uri-review] ssh URI

[Paul Prescod <paul at prescod.net>]

On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 9:01 AM, Steve Suehring <suehring at braingia.org> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> Attached is a draft to be submitted to the IETF for URI scheme related
> to secure shell (ssh).  The draft was originally included in the secsh
> Working Group which has since concluded.
> ...


>
> Please provide feedback as appropriate.

What does SFTP support GET and not PUT?

Is the syntax/protocol of directory listings standardized elsewhere?

What happens if I open a directory without the correct typecode? My
potentially naive impression is that the whole typecode thing adds
more complexity than value: it is easy to pipe the output into a tool
that does the right newline conversions.

What happen to scp URLs?

The assertion that the ssh URI scheme is designed to invoke an
interactive terminal session strikes me as expressing a user interface
decision, which URI schemes typically do not.

I would reword it this way:

The intended usage of the SSH URI is to declare the existence of an
SSH listener. This information could be used (for example) by a web
user agent to invoke an interactive SSH terminal program, or as input
to a script that would automate some action on the remote host."

It would be nice if a server could configure a list of "safe commands"
that it would accept as parameters. A future curl might allow this:

curl ssh://user at host.example.com?uptime > remote_uptime.txt
curl ssh://user at host.example.com?ifconfig > remote_config.txt

The server config might be as simple as a list of commands that are
whitelisted for use this way.

 Paul Prescod