Subject: FTP through browsers

From: Terrill Yuhas <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1999 16:20:44 -0700 (MST)

I have VR14 running fine for the past few weeks but have noticed a
peculiar behavior.  Whenever I ftp from a browser (Netscape 4.5 and IE
4.0) using the ftp://user:pass@server format,  I don't wind up starting in
my home directory but rather in the system root.  Granted this is the same
access available from any other client but it's the starting point that is
giving me grief since I'm setting up a user login for people to be able to
publish to the web root and all are being initially put in the root.

I couldn't find anything in TFM about this.  Is this a behavior I can
control with wu-ftpd?  Using non-browser clients is working as expected.
This happens on three servers with two different OS' (Linux, SunOS),
and three different httpd (NCSA, two versions of Apache).

Did I set something up wrong or is this expected?,

Terrill

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From: Bob Luckin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 99 17:38:41 CST

> Did I set something up wrong or is this expected?,

As far as I know, regular (ie. non-anonymous) users) put in the system root
by default, regardless of whether the client is regular ftp or a browser
(the daemon has no way of telling what the client is anyway...).

You can modify this behaviour by using the guestgroup mechanism in wu-ftpd.
This will allow you to have wu-ftpd chroot users to the directory you
specify - but note as before that this behaviour will then happen with both
browser and regular ftp clients.

For more details on guestgroup, read the man pages which come with the server,
and also the "guestgroup howto" document, available on-line at Kent Landfield's
WU-FTPD resource center
   http://www.landfield.com/wu-ftpd/guest-howto.html

There's lots of other useful information at Ken's site; the starting page is
   http://www.landfield.com/wu-ftpd/

Good luck !

Cheers, Bob
-- 
Bob Luckin      [email-masked]      "Coder, adapt.  FTP Ada, redo C"
                                 [http://www.dhc.net/~luckin/palindromes.html]

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From: Gregory A Lundberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1999 19:21:11 -0500 (EST)

> Did I set something up wrong or is this expected?,

The URL is wrong.  Of course, since there's no current standard for FTP
URLs, you cannot find it.  The only manual (if there even is one) for the
URL would be the docs for the browser.  The IETF FTP Extensions Working
Group has a draft which will, when approved, set a standard for URLs.  
Under the draft, to start at a user's home, you'll need to say:

  ftp://user:[email-masked]/~user/

Which, ISTM, will work fine with Navigator right now, but will break with
IE.  (Disclaimer: it's been a few months since I've looked at the draft,
so I may have the URL wrong under the current revision.)

The reason for this format has to do with deterministic behavior.  The
(implied, in your sample) slash (/) after the domain name means 'starting
from the root'.  The tilde (~) in my sample is a Unix-ism which WU-FTPD
supports; its meaning, if supported, is server-defined.  This URL format
was chosen on the prinicple of least-breakage for current FTP URLs.

-- 

Gregory A Lundberg              Senior Partner, VRnet Company
1441 Elmdale Drive              [email-masked]
Kettering, OH 45409-1615 USA    1-800-809-2195