Re: lynx-dev An ftp browsing bug

[Mike Castle]

On Fri, Jun 25, 1999 at 06:16:01PM -0500, Klaus Weide wrote:
> I dare guess that the FTP code in Lynx has seen more real-world testing
> with unusual FTP servers than that in W3C's libwww.  That shouldn't
> prevent you from checking though.

I didn't see anything of use.  Just seems to set list type to LIST via
NLST.

> ftp.mcafee.com seems to have changed format, they have probably recognized
> that it creates all kinds of problems... If erveryone does, we don't have
> to do anything (just wait a bit).

Damn.  And I swear I just saw it using DOS style again.  Either I'm
hallucinating from lack of food (and the fact that the S.O. is cooking in
the other room), or it is indeed randomly switching back and forth between
unix style and DOS style randomly.

No.  I just checked my xterm scroll back buffer.  At 7:05pm CST, it gave me
DOS style listing.  At 7:36pm CST, it game me unix style listing!

Isn't this just fun!

I wonder if the server switches styles depending on which was the last
address you used (perhaps different companies have different default
listing styles, and the ftp server just gets confused... guessing).

> But it seems ftp.turbopower.com understands NLST and, gives just a list
> of names in response.  It may be enough to let HTFTP.c use NLST for this
> kind of server.

Ok, how do I actually use NLST from a standard unix ftp client?  I tried
quote NLST
and I keep getting:

ftp> quote NLST
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for file list.
425 Can't open data connection.

I did a simple hack to have lynx use NLST for NT, but it just gave me:

                                                                    /
directory

Current directory is /

     * text/plain
   


Which isn't all the useful.  I'll do more digging, but I'm not sure how to 
get the ftp client to spit out what I lynx will see (it's easier to
visualize than a trace).

Meanwhile, netscape gets it right for both sites (it doesn't appear to get
confused by ftp.nai.com saying it's an NT box and sending back unix style
listing, so it may not be using the output of SYST in it's heuristic...
I'll strace and see what it's doing :-).

I think using just SYST output may be too dangerous.  After all, both of
these sites return the same string for SYST, and give different outputs.

Food on the table.  More after dinner.

mrc
-- 
       Mike Castle       Life is like a clock:  You can work constantly
  address@hidden  and be right all the time, or not work at all
www.netcom.com/~dalgoda/ and be right at least twice a day.  -- mrc
    We are all of us living in the shadow of Manhattan.  -- Watchmen