[Info-vax] Rethinking DECNET ?

[Neil Rieck]

JF,

I've been thinking about your original post lately and wonder if you've ever heard about "VMS feature extensions" extended for FTP. Not all stacks support it (I don't think "TCPIP Services for VMS" does but both TCPWare and Multinet do). What happens is this: after authentication, the FTP client will attempt to enable VMS extensions. I tried it this morning by used TCPware's FTP client to connect to HP (probably not a VMS box) and this is what I saw:

KAWC99::Neil> ftp ftp.hp.com
220 g6u0505c.atlanta.hp.com FTP server (hp.com version whp02s_p1) ready.
530 Please login with USER and PASS.
_Username [neil]: anonymous
331 Guest login ok, send your complete e-mail address as password.
_Password: 
230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply.
500 'FEAT': command not understood.
500 'SITE +VMS+': command not understood.
FTP> 

The two 500 messages are what I am referring to. Now these VMS extensions do not do everything one would like. For example, a DECnet copy of an indexed file will leave all the indexes intact but an FTP (with/without VMS extensions enabled) would not. Something like this would provide a good starting place for your original post.

Neil Rieck
Kitchener / Waterloo / Cambridge,
Ontario, Canada.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/