2 ms·

Actually, Multinet FTP does have a couple of switches for "VMS mode," but SFTP2 got a working solution in front of us with less reading of the manuals. POSIX w

by chasil 3y ago

Actually, Multinet FTP does have a couple of switches for "VMS mode," but SFTP2 got a working solution in front of us with less reading of the manuals. POSIX was wise in having absolutely none of this. Would you rather Apple had won over this standard and we had resource forks everywhere? I understand that the largest use of alternate data streams at times in the past was malware, to evade virus scanners, which seems to be an anti-feature to me. A file should be a stream of bytes that can at least survive transfer over a socket (that is 8-bit clean), unlike this ODS-2 detritus.

tedunangst 3y ago
You know that e.g. linux supports extended attributes and they don't copy so easily over ftp either?
- chasil 3y ago
  Yes, I know that ACLs, security contexts, and zfs/btrfs parameters aren't going to move. This would be know as "filesystem metadata," and the send/receive operations on zfs/btrfs would be the best bet to preserve them. However, my ODS-2 problem was not metadata, it was data that lacked esoteric formatting. I certainly don't need that for Oracle RMAN - an FTP binary transfer will always works.
  - tambourine_man 3y ago
    At some point you start wondering what's meta and what's data, after all.
    - chasil 3y ago
      Everything in the stat() structure is metadata. We could start there.
      - tambourine_man 3y ago
        Why do we consider creation date to be metadata, for instance? In photos and audio files, it's so essencial that it is stored in the data stream, even though we call it metadata. It's a fuzzy line and everyone is probably a bit discontent to where it's drawn.
canucker2016 3y ago
I don't care who wins - I don't have a horse in this race at all. I'm sure the FTP devs were just trying to get something working - they weren't worried about supporting all the possibilities for the definition of "file". I'd guess the only people who really care are those affected (mainly VMS/Apple people who have to send/receive files via FTP). Well, I guess if I was trying to FTP a file that had data in an alternate data stream (ADS) from an NTFS drive, I'd care. But then I know that the ADS wouldn't be sent by FTP and package the file accordingly. I don't think POSIX designed anything - they just codified/standardized what was running in the wild. Wouldn't something like the VMS-equivalent of a tar archive of your files work better for round-tripping to a non-VMS computer? The largest use of alternate data streams is actually when a user downloads a file from the Internet via Internet Explorer/Chrome/Firefox on WinXP+. The browser creates an alternate data stream, Zone.Identifier, for the downloaded file so Windows will know that the file may be tainted. see https://guyrleech.wordpress.com/2018/08/06/where-did-that-download-come-from/ https://guyrleech.wordpress.com/2018/08/06/where-did-that-do...

by chasil 3y ago

tedunangst 3y ago

You know that e.g. linux supports extended attributes and they don't copy so easily over ftp either?

chasil 3y ago
Yes, I know that ACLs, security contexts, and zfs/btrfs parameters aren't going to move. This would be know as "filesystem metadata," and the send/receive operations on zfs/btrfs would be the best bet to preserve them. However, my ODS-2 problem was not metadata, it was data that lacked esoteric formatting. I certainly don't need that for Oracle RMAN - an FTP binary transfer will always works.
- tambourine_man 3y ago
  At some point you start wondering what's meta and what's data, after all.
  - chasil 3y ago
    Everything in the stat() structure is metadata. We could start there.
    - tambourine_man 3y ago
      Why do we consider creation date to be metadata, for instance? In photos and audio files, it's so essencial that it is stored in the data stream, even though we call it metadata. It's a fuzzy line and everyone is probably a bit discontent to where it's drawn.

canucker2016 3y ago

I don't care who wins - I don't have a horse in this race at all. I'm sure the FTP devs were just trying to get something working - they weren't worried about supporting all the possibilities for the definition of "file". I'd guess the only people who really care are those affected (mainly VMS/Apple people who have to send/receive files via FTP). Well, I guess if I was trying to FTP a file that had data in an alternate data stream (ADS) from an NTFS drive, I'd care. But then I know that the ADS wouldn't be sent by FTP and package the file accordingly. I don't think POSIX designed anything - they just codified/standardized what was running in the wild. Wouldn't something like the VMS-equivalent of a tar archive of your files work better for round-tripping to a non-VMS computer? The largest use of alternate data streams is actually when a user downloads a file from the Internet via Internet Explorer/Chrome/Firefox on WinXP+. The browser creates an alternate data stream, Zone.Identifier, for the downloaded file so Windows will know that the file may be tainted. see https://guyrleech.wordpress.com/2018/08/06/where-did-that-download-come-from/ https://guyrleech.wordpress.com/2018/08/06/where-did-that-do...