From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Jun 6 15:31:58 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id PAA15098 for questions-outgoing; Thu, 6 Jun 1996 15:31:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.211]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id PAA15088 for ; Thu, 6 Jun 1996 15:31:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id PAA02040; Thu, 6 Jun 1996 15:25:10 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199606062225.PAA02040@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: Stupid ftpd question To: fqueries@jraynard.demon.co.uk (James Raynard) Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 15:25:10 -0700 (MST) Cc: wollman@lcs.mit.edu, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <199606061443.OAA00221@jraynard.demon.co.uk> from "James Raynard" at Jun 6, 96 02:43:26 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > > Any recent (since 4.3-Reno) Berkeley FTP client will query the remote > > host for its system type, and set the transfer mode accordingly. FTP > > servers since a similar vintage respond thusly: > > > > 215 UNIX Type: L8 Version: BSD-199506 > > > > The client is actually looking for `UNIX', which is why it doesn't say > > `FreeBSD' there. > > True, but my point was that you can't rely on clients doing this. You can rely on *sucky* clients doing this. The *good* clients will do this for you, even DOS-to-DOS or VMS-to-VMS because they note that the system type is the same, and the default transfer mode is supposed to be such that a text file will be, by default, locally usable. The translation is done at the server because there isn't a file attribute "source system type" that is set on transfers -- so only the server can convert the file into an architecture-neutral wire format. A DOS client *could* decide, based on the extention, wheter the file should be transferred as text or binary, and switch on a file by file basis: after all, this is how Windows devices on icons and invocation methods in the absence of .inf files for the icon being clicked-on/dragged/etc.. Netscape is one example of a "smart client" for DOS boxes. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.