------- Forwarded Message
>
> Date: Thu, 11 Mar 93 09:29:17 -0600
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Hope Goering)
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Question about .netrc
>
>
> We are having trouble getting a .netrc file to work (to automate
> answers to ftp prompts) when a user's home directory is an AFS volume.
> If the home directory is not in AFS, then the .netrc
> file works as expected.
>
> Is this working as designed and expected? Is there any way
> around it?
>
------- End of Forwarded Message
You don't say what sort of machine you're having trouble on, so I can't
say for sure that there's not something broken about your ftp client, but
.netrc works just fine for me from an AFS home directory.. Note that ftp
itself will generally reject a .netrc file that has unix mode bits that
include read permissions for anyone other than the owner. (0600 is probably
the best set of permissions.) You *will* run into problems with the fact
that AFS ignores the "group" and "other" sets of Unix mode bits which means
that a user's .netrc will be readable by anyone who can has read and lookup
rights for his home directory. If this is undesirable (say, for example,
that this hypothetical user is dumb enough to put his passwords into a
plaintext file..) then it would be better for ~/.netrc to be a soft link to
a file in a privately permitted directory.
In any case, .netrc in AFS space works just fine on my Decstation. If you
can tell me what sort of machine is giving you trouble I might be able to
test it for you if I have a client of that type. If it turns out to be a
problem with your vendor-supplied ftp there are many free ftp replacements
that you could replace it with that are substantially better.
-mcnally.
