Time stamp problem when doing ftp

[Waqar Razi]

I have a customer running RHEL 5.1. They transfer some files to the server using ftp. The transferred files have incorrect time stamp problem. I have checked the system date and time and they are correct. But when they put some files on the server, they have incorrect time stamp. Can any one please give me some clue.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

Consider using RHN to update to RHEL 5 update 3.

Consider using ntp to keep system time up to date down to the second.

Neither will definitely solve the problem but it eliminates a possible cause of the issue.

You may have your server configured to preserve permissions. This is actually common and there could be a problem with the date/time stamp on the source system.

Consider using ntp on the source system and check the date/time stamp prior to transmitting them via ftp.

SEP

[Waqar Razi]

How can I check if the server is configured to preserve permissions.

[Steven Schweda]

> [...] The transferred files have incorrect
> time stamp problem. [...]

Define "incorrect".

FTP does not normally preserve file date-time
(or ownership, or permissions, or ...).

> You may have your server configured to
> preserve permissions.

I don't understand how an FTP _server_ can
preserve anything.

> How can I check if the server is configured
> to preserve permissions.

See above.


Some FTP clients (like, say, wget) can, as an
option, try to capture some of these data
from a directory listing, and then set the
attributes accordingly on a fetched file,
but, given the unfortunate format of a
typical UNIX(-like) "ls -l" directory
listing, the results are often sub-ideal.

If you _really_ want the file attributes at
the destination to match those at the source,
then you should probably use "tar" or Zip
(or something) to preserve those attributes,
and use FTP to transfer the archive instead
of individual files. Then you'll have the
attributes available when you extract the
files from the archive at the other end.