Subject: Symbolic links and wu-ftpd

From: "Javier Puche" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 1996 14:46:42 +0100

Dear people at wu-ftpd list,

 I subscribed long ago this list looking for a solution on the problem I
report later, I did already ask for it time ago, but got no solution.
Amongst the interesting discussions in this list I have never heard
again on the topic I posed, although I thought it was a very common
problem to ftp-masters. Ok, as I have found out more things I tell you
the whole thing:

 Having symlinks on your ftp hierarchy is a cause of confusions to
ftp-users due to the way wu-ftpd treats them. wu-ftpd as well as some
shells does a real 'cd' each time you get into a directory, so if we are
in a directory 'os' with subdirectories:

linux -> symlink to ../../mirror/linux
FreBSD
...

and we do a cd into linux and then a 'cd ..' back, one does not appear
at 'so' but at mirror, so you go forward and backward and appear in
another place.

 Bash, funet-ftpd and others treat this problem by not doing actual 'cd'
but keeping somewhere the path where you are, and applying it to the
commands as needed, while maintaining actual path to the root of the
ftp. You have to add code for doing the changes in the path variable
every time you do a 'cd' or similar.

 A possible solution is to do NFS loopback mounts or just loopback mounts
in the operating systems that support it ( Solaris lofs ). This solution
works right, but it gets unmaneagable when having hundreds of symlinks (
this comes when you have contents accesible through different structures
).

 As once I saw an ftp site (sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk) that runs wu-ftpd and
treats symlinks this way, I asked their managers ([email-masked])
for how they do it. After several messages in a wide range of time I got
response, telling me they patched the server and posted the patches to
the people who maintains wu-ftpd, and I should get them from there.

 I sent an e-mail to the people who maintained wu-ftpd in the past ( I
got the address from http://freeway.oact.hq.nasa.gov/wuarchive.html ),
but got no response. Maybe I did not send it to the correct place.

 As many people here is maintaining the current development of wu-ftpd, I
would appreciate a lot if someone can tell me anything about those
patches. 

 I would also like to know if someone has developed patches for directory
names hidding.

 In case no one has ever heard of that I would like to get advice on
patching wu-ftpd, i.e. how to do it for making it useful for people
other than me.

Thanks for your time.

Regards,

Javier Puche.
RedIRIS-CSIC. Spanish Academic & Research Network.
MADRID.
Spain.

---

From: Lee McLoughlin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 1996 15:28:42 +0000

> the people who maintains wu-ftpd, and I should get them from there.

I think it would be best if the Academ people added my work into their
definitive version.

However I'll see about making a version of my patches available, relative
to the current Academ release (which I think is 2.4.2-beta-10).

I'll email to this list when its done and where to find it.

	Lee

--
Lee McLoughlin.                         Phone: +44 171 594 8388
IC-Parc, Imperial College,              Fax:   +44 171 594 8449
South Kensington, London. SW7 2BZ. UK.  Email: [email-masked]