Re: lynx-dev An ftp browsing bug

[Klaus Weide]

On Fri, 25 Jun 1999, Mike Castle wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 25, 1999 at 06:16:01PM -0500, Klaus Weide wrote:
> > 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).

Turns out you can toggle it, see appended transcript.  Maybe you can
make the lynx code use this.  May have to toggle several times until
the setting is as we want it (an stop attempts to do this on non-200
response code).

This also works for ftp.turbopower.com.

> > 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.

Some clients have an "nlist" command.

> I did a simple hack to have lynx use NLST for NT, but it just gave me:
> 
>                                                                     /
> directory
> 
> Current directory is /
> 
>      * text/plain

Hmm, I though Lynx was able to do something useful with just-filenames.

> 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.

Might be good enough to trigger attempting to use SITE DIRSTYLE though.

  Klaus


While talking to ftp.mcafee.com aka ftp.nai.com:
---------------------------------------------------------------
ftp> quo site help
214-The following SITE  commands are recognized(* ==>'s unimplemented).
   CKM
   DIRSTYLE
   HELP
   STATS
214  HELP command successful.
ftp> quo site help dirstyle
214 Syntax: SITE DIRSTYLE (toggle directory format)
ftp> site dirstyle
200 MSDOS-like directory output is on
ftp> dir
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls.
04-23-99  11:36PM       <DIR>          licensed
04-23-99  11:47PM       <DIR>          pub
226 Transfer complete.
ftp> site dirstyle
200 MSDOS-like directory output is off
ftp> dir
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls.
d---------   1 owner    group               0 Apr 23 23:36 licensed
d---------   1 owner    group               0 Apr 23 23:47 pub
226 Transfer complete.
ftp>