Re: sftp rename not good.

["Joseph Galbraith" <galb-list%vandyke.com@localhost>]

> > 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. You cannot connect to the server in the first place unless
> > you're either a regular user of that system, or you have made a special
> > pre-arrangement to obtain an account on that system. You certainly won't
have
> > write privileges to rename arbitrary files on a server that is
completely
> > unknown to you. Theoretical discussions about what might cause problems
may
> > be an interesting intellectual diversion, but they are just that -
> > *diversions*. Real users will have knowledge about the remote server
that
> > they're operating on.
> >
> > To assume the client has no knowledge of the server is pointless.
>
> I completely disagree with this statement.  It is a perfectly possible to
> give someone an account on a system for the sole purpose of (and limited
> to) sftp access.  The user may never log into the directly, or even know
> what the host OS is or how to use it; it acts as an opaque sftp file
> server.  This situation is neither nonsensical nor pointless; on the
> contrary, it is useful and reasonably common, follows normal and useful
> principles of abstraction, and is likely to become more common as sftp
> becomes more widely implemented.

Precisely.

Much of this discussion has focused around one type
of user.  The VMS user sitting someplace else accessing
his VMS files remotely.  (Replace VMS with any other operating
system you'd like, in both places.)

In practice, I see at least one other scenerio is extremely
common.  The Windows user, sitting at a windows box, accessing
files on some other platform.  For example, managing a website
on a unix server.  This user has some minimal experience on the
host operating system, but is not and doesn't want to be intimately
familar with the host operating system.  And the question they ask
me, is "Why doesn't it behave just like every other windows program."

It is a reasonable expectation: the sftp client they are running is a
windows program.  It presents their files like windows does.  They
have every right to expect it to manipulate those files in the manner
they are most familar with: windows.

(Again, substitute windows in all locations with any other OS of your
choice.)

- Joseph