topic Anonymous FTP access through Internet Explorer in Operating System - OpenVMS

Anonymous FTP access through Internet Explorer

Peter Zeiszler — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 17:52:59 GMT

We are migrating some machines from Multinet to HP Tcpip stack. On the system we migrated to HP TCPIP we have anonymous access setup. We use Internet explorer to access the FTP and to browse through the files.

On the system when it was Multinet we could do this browsing. On the HP TCPIP I can not browse down into the directory structure.

Using command line I can still change directories.

The internet explorer window is returning a single line as a link with all of this data:
DCE.DIR;1 1/35 4-AUG-2005 12:41:34 [SYSADMIN,SYSTEM] (RWE,RWE,R,R)

On the system as Multinet it would return DCE as the directory and some of the additional data but not the permissions.

I can capture screens if that would help any

Re: Anonymous FTP access through Internet Explorer

Martin Vorlaender — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 04:36:16 GMT

This is one of the shortcomings of FTP that will haunt us for a long time...

As there is no command in the protocol for a computer to get a directory listing with size, date, etc., programs use the LIST command (the output of which is intended to be human readable), and parse what is coming back.

So the FTP client has to have a knowledge about how a VMS DIRECTORY listing is set up - as that is what LIST gets you on a TCP/IP Services system. IE seemingly does not have that knowledge.

Multinet, on the other hand, sends LIST output in "standard" Unix format - which is what all FTP clients understand. There may be a way to bring TCP/IP Services to do that, too, but glancing over the Management Manual I didn't see anything.

cu,
Martin

Re: Anonymous FTP access through Internet Explorer

Ian Miller. — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 08:38:13 GMT

"There may be a way to bring TCP/IP Services to do that, too, but glancing over the Management Manual I didn't see anything."

parhaps HGFTP is the answer :-)
ftp://ftp.process.com/vms-freeware/fileserv/hgftp.zip

Re: Anonymous FTP access through Internet Explorer

Steven Schweda — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 10:24:55 GMT

It's just another part of Microsoft's
insidious (and pervasive) scheme to drive VMS
from the marketplace.

No, wait. This isn't comp.os.vms. Sorry.

As already suggested, your basic options are
to change browsers or FTP servers. Not
having to please anyone else, I rather enjoy
seeing all the messages like this in the log:

1-SEP-2005 09:26:59.81 User:anonymous ident:IEUser@ status:000186D4 CWD dir:/info-zip/zip30e/zip.c

And then I map the anonymous FTP directory to
"/ftp" in my HTTP server, so that these folks
can still get to the files that way.