Re: SFTP URI issues

["Tom Petch" <nwnetworks%dial.pipex.com@localhost>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Salowey, Joe" <jsalowey%cisco.com@localhost>
To: <ietf-ssh%NetBSD.org@localhost>
Sent: Wednesday, December 28, 2005 2:40 AM
Subject: SFTP URI issues


> Several issues have been raised in the past month over the SFTP URI.
>
> Issue #1: On the IETF list several people expressed concern that the
> scheme name "sftp" might be confused with RFC 913 (Simple FTP) or RFC
> 2228/4217 (FTP security extensions using TLS).  While I think 913 is
> historic and unlikely to cause confusion I believe there are
> implementations of TLS FTP around.  I think there are probably many more
> implementations of sftp and many people would understand that SFTP is
> file transfer in SSH, but there is room for confusion.  We could either
> note the confusion and keep sftp or select some other scheme name such
> as sshftp and reserve sftp so no other protocol uses it.

Choose another one! ideally one starting with ftp like ftps or ftpssh; for me it
is the ftp that matters most, with ssh being subsidiary to that (in an ssh WG,
it it tempting but I think misleading to put it the other way round:-)

>
> Issue #2: The current draft states that if you specify a URL that begins
> without a %2F (URL encoded /) it is relative to the home directory.
> Several people have suggested that this is awkward and they would rather
> see
>
> A) A URL that beings without a %2f to be an absolute URL, and choose
> another delimiter such as ~ to indicate a path relative to the home
> directory.
>
> B) Allow / instead of %2F so sftp://joe%example.com@localhost/%2ffile becomes
> sftp://joe%example.com@localhost//file
>
> I'm not sure B is legal URL encoding, but I think it may work.  A seems
> like it would work.
>
Legal URI since authority is always present (according to the syntax) and it
falls under the path-abempty construct of RFC3986, as opposed to the
path-absolute which begins with a single such character.  But I would go for
another character to indicate a relative path; solidus has so many different
uses in different contexts.

And I would change URL to URI throughout the I-D.

> Any Recommendations?

Gosh, shades of ITU-T:-)

Tom Petch
>
> Thanks,
>
> Joe