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Re: SFTP v6?



Niels Möller wrote:
Joseph Galbraith <galb-list%vandyke.com@localhost> writes:


This is almost the way it works, but not quite.

V_C = max { version numbers supported by the client }
V_U = highest version supported by server <= V_C

(V_S doesn't actually exist on the wire.)


Thanks for the correction. Let's see if I understand what this implies
for interoperability. The failure, for traditional version exchange,
seems to be

  * Client supporting version 3 and 6.
  * Server supporting version 3 and 4.

  =>  V_U = 4  =>  communication failure.

Is this correct?

Let me call out one additional failure-- I mention
it in my other message but I think it is worth
calling out seperately.

It is more a failure to fail gracefully.

* Client supporting versions < n
* Server supporting versions >= n+1

These two can't interoperate, but the server can't
communicate why.

The client sees a channel close as the failure mode,
which could mean many different things.

Today, in fact, a channel close probably means that
the server crashed.

Or had some other fatal startup bug/failure.

Version negotiation failure is probably a small
percentage of such cases.  (Today anyway-- next year
may be different.)

I'd like an unambigous failure when the versions are
incompatible.

Thanks,

- Joseph



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