Re: [ftpext] FWD: ftp/959 reboot

["William F. Maton" <[e-mail]>]

On Mon, 9 Aug 2010, Anthony Bryan wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 5:11 PM, Daniel Stenberg <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> On Mon, 9 Aug 2010, Anthony Bryan wrote:
>>
>>> Daniel, any thoughts/insight into the RFC 1123 discussion, which appears
>>> to update RFC 959?
>>
>> Yes, it seems to update or at least clarify a lot of RFC959 details but I
>> must admit I've never really used 1123 much as a reference. I really can't
>> tell at this point how valuable those sections are or aren't.
>
> it would be nice to know how authoritative they are. it sounds like at
> least some people are not familiar w/ 1123. I only came across it
> after digging deep into stuff.

So I've had another read of RFC 1123 4.1 coming from a different light. 
All it seems to do is clarify what implementors of RFC 959 should be 
supporting.  "RFC 959 was SO barebones as to leave interpretation wide 
open, so he's a clarifcation on what to do to make FTP servers and clients 
right so they work."

But I'm speculating because despite my efforts at looking for context 
(mailing lists, emails on the Internet), the RFC itself is all we have to 
go on.

If we look at 4.1.5 then we have an idea of what RFC 1123 is trying to 
say and perhaps compare that to the post Oct 1989 outcome:  Have 
implementations of the succeeding decade adopted any of that.

Didn't someone here once say that a working group on FTP would require a 
lot of work? :-)

>   Note that there
>   are some flaws in the description of the restart mechanism in STD 9,
>   RFC 959 [3].  See section 4.1.3.4 of RFC 1123 [9] for the
>   corrections.

OK, so FTPbis 'updates' RFC 1123, not obsoletes it.

> sheer length of 3659 & the fact that no one might be interested kept
> me from including it. it adds about 50 pages and is now included.

I'll have another look.

wfms