From Tidbits #578
TenBITS/30-Apr-01
-----------------
by TidBITS Staff <editors@tidbits.com>
Other members of the TidBITS staff are also contributing to the
TenBITS columns - our looks at issues and products surrounding Mac
OS X - so check for initials after each item to see who's
responsible for it.
**More on Mac OS X's FTP Server** -- I hate being fooled by a
special case. In last week's installment of TenBITS, I said Mac OS
X's FTP server doesn't do MacBinary and noted that uploading files
with resource forks wouldn't work. (If you're not sure what
MacBinary is, see "Macintosh Internet File Format Primer" in
TidBITS-455_.) That's basically true, but Mac users aren't likely
to suffer file damage because most Macintosh FTP clients like
Interarchy and Fetch automatically encode files as MacBinary if
necessary (generally adding a .bin extension to the filename).
That didn't happen in this one case, since the file that alerted
me to the problem was a self-mounting image, and my Internet
Control Panel file mappings for the .smi extension were
incorrectly set to treat .smi files as Binary rather than
MacBinary, probably due to Real Player taking over the .smi
extension for another type of file.
<
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06405>
<
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05066>
The real annoyance here is that because Mac OS X's FTP server
doesn't understand MacBinary, as every other Macintosh FTP server
does, files encoded into MacBinary and uploaded via FTP are
unusable until you decode them with StuffIt Expander. And if you
tried to download a file with a resource fork from Mac OS X via
FTP without first encoding it manually into MacBinary format, you
would lose the resource fork and wind up with an unusable file.
Is it fair to ding Apple for this failing of what is essentially a
plain vanilla Unix FTP server? The answer is yes in this case,
since Apple exposes the FTP server in the Mac OS X interface via
the Sharing control panel. If Mac OS X contained other Unix
services which were unfriendly to Macintosh users but were
available only through the command line, adding Macintosh support
would be nice, but a lower priority.
If this issue concerns you, let Apple know via their Mac OS X
feedback page. While you're at it, you might mention it's been
almost three weeks since the potential FTP vulnerability in Mac OS
X's FTP server was reported - that's way too long to wait for an
official statement regarding a security hole. [ACE]
<
http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback/>
, Peter -
http://titancity.com
Q: How do you keep a lawyer from drowning?
A: Shoot him before he hits the water.