Re: [Gnu-arch-users] sftp rename?

[Jan Hudec]

On Thu, Dec 25, 2003 at 10:04:35 +0100, Thomas Zander wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> Many people that have a history in unix will mistakenly identify the sftp 
> protocol with a service very different from the ssh version.
> In KDE3.2 the exact same service has been added but they called it 
> differently; they called it 'fish'. I'm pretty sure they have a good reason 
> to call it that and if you want I can find out why.
> 
> Point is that I think the sftp protocol naming in arch is confusing and I 
> think we should call it 'fish' instead.
> 
> Naturally the sftp would be deprecated and will still be supported as an 
> alias 
> for the fish protool.
> 
> Thoughts?

SFTP is subsystem of ssh2. It's stable and very secure. The protocol is
simple, so the implementation is short and can be reasonably tested.
Since sftp is both official name for the subsystem and name of standart
client, other clients implementing this protocol (including tla) should
stick to the sftp:// uri scheme.

FISH on the other hand is "FIles over SHell" -- a hack protocol that
allows bourne shell to act as a server. It is not tied with ssh (it can
be used over rsh or telnet or any other connection too).

Definitely FISH should not _replace_ sftp. They are different things and
can happily live side by side. Moreover, until there is a secure fish
server implementation, that does not grant local execution permission,
I would not even consider using it anywhere sftp can be used.

Note, that since fish can be used over different protocols, it's uri
scheme should probalby be something like fish%ssh, fish%rsh, fish%telnet
...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                 Jan 'Bulb' Hudec 
<address@hidden>