Anonymous FTP With No Userid Prompt

[Stan Hanek]

My customer says they require me to configure Anonymous FTP on a server (11.00) to allow two userids to ftp in (from an 11.11 server) without being prompted for a userid or password. Is this possible? They claim it was done on the old production server, yet I can't fathom how. Without being prompted for the userid we wouldn't even know they are attempting to use anonymous ftp!

[Steven Schweda]

> My customer says [...]

Probably drunk. So far as I know, plain old
FTP (not SFTP, or anything else fancy) needs
a user name and a password. Anonymous FTP
allows more password possibilities (typically
anything which looks even vaguely like an
e-mail address), but it still uses a user
name ("anonymous") and a password.

Most Web browsers will do anonymous FTP
without making the user specify the user name
or password, but the browser still sends them
to the FTP server.

Most FTP servers can be configured to allow
anonymous user names other than "anonymous"
("ftp" is popular, and easier to type), but
it's not clear what point there would be "to
allow two userids" to do anything. Why two?

SSH (hence SFTP) can allow access without
explicitly specifying a user name or
password, but that's a different story.

[Stan Hanek]

Thanks - I realized later with a little additional snooping that they had combined Anonymous FTP with the use of .netrc files (for the two users). It didn't occur to me at first. I was thrown because the new server is using the ftpaccess file and the old one was not - but that had nothing to do with the "problem". I hate it when the users customize their own environment and then expect me to troubleshoot their problems for them. Oh, well.

[Stan Hanek]

I am closing this after instructing the users to update their .netrc files with the new hostname.