RE: sftp rename not good.

["Howard Chu" <hyc%highlandsun.com@localhost>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ietf-ssh-owner%netbsd.org@localhost [mailto:ietf-ssh-owner%netbsd.org@localhost]On Behalf
Of Damien Miller

> Howard Chu wrote:
> >> The client may try to hide the sftp protocol and act like the user
> >> expects her normal system to act, which is probably what matters to
> >> her. She shouldn't need to know if someone decides to move
> her files
> >> from a UN*X box to a VMS server.
> >
> > This statement implies a situation where the client is not
> expected to know
> > anything about the remote server. In practice, this situation is
> > non-sensical.
>
> That is bogus: many ISPs and hosting providers provide ssh and sftp
> access to their servers without disclosing details about the OS
> environment. All the user knows is an IP address, a username
> and a password.
>
> Chances are, right now, that these are running an Unix-like OS of some
> sort, but there are no guarantees.

Details, no. But everyone operates under a certain set of assumptions. This
works today precisely because the vast majority of SPs use Unix servers. And
most ISPs explicitly advertise "Unix hosted" or "Windows hosted" or whatever,
it's a selling point in itself.

If you sign up with an ISP and all they give you is an IP address, username,
and a password on an IBM mainframe running OS/390, with a "home directory"
residing in a partitioned data set, you can bet that (a) all of your unspoken
assumptions about how the host behaves will be wrong and (b) you will need to
call tech support very early on.

The vast majority of The Internet today runs on Unix systems, using
hierarchical filesystems with forward-slashes as pathname separators, and so
a majority of people are accustomed to working with their servers in a
particular manner. Even if no one handed them docs for it, that does *not*
mean they have zero information about the server, it means they're operating
on implicit information. There's a big difference between that and using a
system with zero information.

You cannot use a server without knowledge of how the server behaves. When you
are a legitimate user of a server, you also have legitimate access to
information about the server - whoever provides your account has no choice
but to give you this information. The information may just be "it works just
like your PC" or it may be a detailed guidebook, but the information is there
nonetheless.

  -- Howard Chu
  Chief Architect, Symas Corp.       Director, Highland Sun
  http://www.symas.com               http://highlandsun.com/hyc
  Symas: Premier OpenSource Development and Support