[Info-vax] Potential loss of data problem in sftp client in TCP/IP Services ?

[Simon Clubley]

On 2012-03-12, David Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>
> I'm still trying to understand the problem.  You indicate that you had been using V5.6 
> ECO5.  Are you saying the problem exists in this version?
>

No, the file truncation problem does not exist in the sftp image supplied
with ECO5, but other different problems do exist, which is why the latest
Engineering images were loaded onto the system in question.

This file truncation problem is clearly a very recent problem. I am still
waiting to hear back from HP, so in the meantime I am trying to find out
if anyone else can duplicate this using the most recent TCP/IP ECO (V5.7
ECO3).

> Last year I implemented a small application that uses SFTP to get and put files from and 
> to a non-VMS system.  I needed to use a batch command file for SFTP since things ware 
> happening in a batch job, not from a terminal.  I have not had any problems in either 
> direction.  On the non-VMS system I do not know either the system, nor the file format.  I 
> suspect some form of Unix as the directory / path structure used "/".
>
> Now, the batch file I use for input to SFTP gets automatically translated into stream_lf 
> by SFTP, but as far as I can see, the actual files transfered do not.
>

That's very different from my experiments. On the older versions of the sftp
client, all input files are converted to stream_lf during transfer. HP even
have a command procedure floating around internally which allows you to send
a file as a stream (CRLF terminated) format file using this older version.

It works by converting the file to stream format and then altering the file
attributes to make it appear as a stream_lf file so that it doesn't get
converted during transfer.

> The files I transfer all have records of the same length, but are sequential variable 
> files on VMS regardless of direction of transfer.
>
> So what I'm trying to understand is, are you having trouble with all sequential variable 
> files, or just those files where individual records are of differing length?

All the files I need to transfer have records of different length so that
is what I have been testing.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
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