Re: A future for the SSH File Transfer Protocol?

[Markus Friedl <markus%openbsd.org@localhost>]

On Sun, Nov 11, 2001 at 02:10:59AM -0500, Thor Simon wrote:
> 1) SCP is a lightweight protocol which is constrained in purpose and
>    function to be a replacement for traditional Berkeley Unix 'rcp';
>    SFTP is a much heavier protocol which tries to provide the functionality
>    of FTP (and perhaps then some) atop the SSHv2 transport layer.

i don't agree. SFTP fixes the problems in SCP, while FTP
is much more complex than SFTP. people are just confused
because of the 3 common letters FTP.

> Personally, my taste runs much more to a simple file transfer protocol than
> to a very rich and complex one, but to date the SSH WG has felt otherwise.

that's wrong. SFTP is very simple, all it does is
	open/read/write/close/opendir/readdir

SCP might be simpler, but has too many problems.

you should ask vendors who actually tried to implement both.

> I've committed to do an informational RFC on the rcp protocol but keep
> failing to find the time for the last 10% of work to get it out the door;
> at least then those who cared to implement SCP would have some documentation
> other than the Berkeley code.

it's not worth the trouble.

-m