Bug 58674

Summary: "ncftpls -1" can report bogus error
Product: [Retired] Red Hat Raw Hide Reporter: Jonathan Kamens <jik>
Component: ncftpAssignee: Karsten Hopp <karsten>
Status: CLOSED UPSTREAM QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 1.0   
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: i386   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2005-01-25 11:46:18 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Attachments:
Description Flags
Patch to ignore bogus nlst errors from servers none

Description Jonathan Kamens 2002-01-22 18:05:40 UTC 
With ncftp-3.1.1-1 and earlier versions as well:

> ncftpls -F -1 ftp://208.179.59.17/pub/linux/kernel/people/hedrick/ide-2.2.20/
ncftpls: directory listing error: could not start data transfer.
> 

The problem goes away if you omit the "-1" flag.

The problem is that some FTP server implementors have decided that NLST should
return an error if a directory is empty, rather than returning a success code
and sending no data on the data socket.  This is stupid, because it makes it
impossible for a client to distinguish reliably between a real error retrieving
a directory listing and merely an empty directory listing.

In any case, I will attach a patch to work around this stupid server behavior.
Comment 1 Jonathan Kamens 2002-01-22 18:06:32 UTC 
Created attachment 43195 [details]
Patch to ignore bogus nlst errors from servers