On Monday, 09/19/2011 at 09:17 EDT, "Frederick, Michael" <[email protected]> wrote: > I found out that the particular FTP client that ships with a SuSE distribution > is 'lukemftp' which contains this additional "preserve" command. After > uninstalling this and installing a different FTP client I was able to get the > timestamp behavior that was desired without any additional fuss, but now I know > about netrc.
<box type=soap> As an aside, the ability of a client to set the timestamp of a file on the server is a corruption of RFC 3659, which defines how an FTP client can *retrieve* a canonical timestamp from the server (MDTM). Some rogue FTP implementations extend MDTM to allow a SET operation. I certainly appreciate the reasons an ftp client might want to set the timestamp (e.g. poor man's backup), but I would very careful about building any critical business process that depends on that capability. If I did, I would document the heck out of that dependency and get Data Security approval and Management sign-off on risk acceptance. Imagine an auditor's surprise if they were using the timestamp of a transferred file to determine when the transfer took place, only to discover that the dates cannot be trusted. "DOWN WITH ROGUE FTP SERVERS!" [I blame the server, not the client, btw.] "SOS: SAVE OUR STANDARDS!" </box> Alan Altmark Senior Managing z/VM and Linux Consultant IBM System Lab Services and Training ibm.com/systems/services/labservices office: 607.429.3323 mobile; 607.321.7556 [email protected] IBM Endicott ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For more information on Linux on System z, visit http://wiki.linuxvm.org/
