Subject: Re: dir command

From: [email-masked] (David L. Thompson)
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 1996 09:11:05 -0700

>>I don't agree on this one. The next thing that will not run is tar, compress,
>>gzip and other convertors.
>
>True.  However, how many messages on this list do you see about that?
>Answer: Very few.  I'd guess that a lot of folks never use the tar,
>compress, gzip converters.  Folks who do need to solve the problem,
>but why make everyone do it?

There are more people out there using this than you might think.

>
>>Complete answers for both are in the FAQ at
>>http://www.hvu.nl/~koos/wu-ftpd-faq.html
>
>Not so.  I worked for a couple of weeks to get SunOS 4.1.4 running.
>I have no interest in the tar/gzip/whatever converters, and so I
>won't be spending any time at all on that.  I could have better used
>the time I wasted figuring this out on something else.  I suspect
>that a large number of folks will be in the same situation (correct
>me if I'm wrong people, and I'll shut up).

FTP isn't something that you should just jump into and hope that it works.
If you are working this way, you may be in for a big suprise when your
machine gets broken in to. I think that anyone setting up an FTP server for
real has the sense to read everything they can regarding security features
of FTP daemons, etc. before they get started.  O'Reilly's books are a good
start, and they could have answered a lot of your questions. WU-FTPd is not
your basic Word-Processor.

>
>It seems to me that basic functionality should happen right out of
>the box.  If you want to get exotic, then fine, maybe it takes a little
>more work.  One might wonder why "ls" is part of the basic package?
>Why not have that call the external "ls" command?  I suspect because
>it is problematic to get that stuff working in the first place.

If you want functionality right out of the box, you shouldn't be working
with freeware FTPd daemons. You should be working with a company like
Microsoft which provides an FTP daemon for NT that is simple to get up and
running.  WU-FTP is not your average run of the mill FTP daemon. It is
running on many many platforms and has security features that out of the
box FTP daemons do not include. The only time I've seen WU-FTP run as an
out of the box app, was installed on a Linux machine by someone who knew
what they were doing.

>
>>In general : this list is not about the newest 'simpleterm for windows', it's
>>about a special kind of ftp-server. Which means (in my opinion) that people
>>should read the manual first, read the faq too, read all the readme's that
>>come with wu-ftpd, and *then* ask questions.
>
>Right.  I did that.  It was no help.  I then spent a lot of time on this
>and finally got it to work.  I don't like to waste my time like this.
>
>Cheers,
>Tim

Get the O'Reilly books. It took me one day to get the server up and running
after I downloaded, but it took me 10 days to test it before I risked
putting my machine on the net.

David

.............................................................................
David L. Thompson                     mailto:[email-masked]
The University of Montana/ITRC        The University of Montana/CS Department
Digital Multimedia Specialist         Missoula, MT  59812
                                      Work Phone : (406)243-4810