Chapter 27 Working With Remote Systems (Overview)

This section includes information on working with remote files.

• What Is the FTP Server?

• What Is a Remote System?

• Changes to the FTP Service for the Solaris 10 Release

• What's New for the Solaris 9 FTP Server?

What Is the FTP Server?

The FTP Server is based on wu-ftpd. Originally developed by Washington University in Saint Louis, wu-ftpd is widely used for distribution of bulk data over the Internet and is the preferred standard for large FTP sites. For information on the licensing terms, refer to the materials that are incorporated at /var/sadm/pkg/SUNWftpu/install/copyright.

What Is a Remote System?

For the purpose of this chapter, a remote system is a workstation or server that is connected to the local system with any type of physical network and configured for TCP/IP communication.

On systems running a Solaris release, TCP/IP configuration is established automatically during startup. For more information, see System Administration Guide: IP Services.

Changes to the FTP Service for the Solaris 10 Release

The Solaris 10 release includes several changes to the FTP service. The changes include enhancements to the FTP server, and changes to the ftpcount, ftpwho and ftp commands.

The enhancements to the FTP server improve scalability and transfer logging. These options are covered in Configuration Help for Busy Sites and in the ftpaccess(4) man page. In specific:

• The sendfile() function is used for binary downloads

• New capabilities supported in the ftpaccess file

  • flush-wait controls the behavior at the end of a download or directory listing

  • ipcos sets the IP Class of Service for either the control or data connection

  • passive ports can be configured so that the kernel selects the TCP port to listen on

  • quota-info enables retrieval of quota information

  • recvbuf sets the receive (upload) buffer size used for binary transfers

  • rhostlookup allows or disallows the lookup of the remote hosts name

  • sendbuf sets the send (download) buffer size used for binary transfers

  • xferlog format customizes the format of the transfer log entry

• -4 option which makes the FTP server only listen for connections on an IPv4 socket when running in standalone mode

In addition, ftpcount and ftpwho now support the -v option, which displays user counts and process information for FTP server classes defined in virtual host ftpaccess files. See the ftpcount(1) and ftpwho(1) man pages for more information.

The FTP client and server now support Kerberos. For more information refer to the ftp(4) man page and to Kerberos User Commands in System Administration Guide: Security Services.

The ftp command has been changed. By default, a Solaris FTP client connected to a Solaris FTP server lists both directories as well as plain files when the ls command is issued to the client. If the FTP server is not running in the Solaris OS, directories may not be listed. To allow for the default Solaris behavior when connecting to non-Solaris FTP servers, the /etc/default/ftp file can be edited appropriately on each Solaris client. To make the change for individual users, the FTP_LS_SENDS_NLST environment variable can be set to yes. For more information see the ftp(4) man page.

The ftpd daemon is managed by the Service Management Facility. Administrative actions on this service, such as enabling, disabling, or restarting, can be performed using the svcadm command. The service's status for all daemons can be queried using the svcs command. For an overview of the Service Management Facility, refer to Chapter 18, Managing Services (Overview), in System Administration Guide: Basic Administration.

What's New for the Solaris 9 FTP Server?

Significant changes were made to the FTP Server in the Solaris 9 release, so this section has been retained for the Solaris 10 release. The FTP Server is compatible with Solaris 8 FTP software, yet offers new capability with improved performance for Solaris 9 users.

Table 27–1 What's New for the Solaris 9 FTP Server

Feature	Description	For Information
User classification by type and location	Permits you to define a class of users, based on type and address	How to Define FTP Server Classes
Limits per class	Controls the number of users from a certain class who are allowed simultaneous login, based on limits that are set in the ftpaccess file	How to Set User Login Limits
System-wide and directory-related messages	Displays the messages that you specify for particular events	How to Create Messages to Be Sent to Users
Upload permissions per directory	Allows you to control uploads to the FTP Server, including file and directory creation and permissions	How to Control Uploads to the FTP Server
File name filter	Enables you to specify which characters, in what sequence, are acceptable in the name of an uploaded file	How to Control Uploads to the FTP Server
Virtual host support	Permits you to configure the FTP server to support multiple domains on a single machine	How to Enable Complete Virtual Hosting
Command logging	Allows logging of commands that are executed by real, guest, and anonymous FTP users	How to Check the Commands Executed by FTP Users
Transfer logging	Allows logging of transfers for real, guest, and anonymous FTP users	ftpaccess(4), xferlog(4), in.ftpd(1M)
As-needed compression and archiving	Allows as-needed compression and archiving by using conversions that are specified in the ftpconversions file	ftpconversions(4), ftpaccess(4)

The following list shows the Solaris 8 features that are not supported in later releases.

• The Solaris 8 /etc/default/ftpd is not supported in later releases. During upgrade, BANNER and UMASK entries are converted to their wu-ftpd equivalents. However, the system administrator might need to manually convert some BANNER lines for the equivalent ftpaccess greeting capability. For further information, see ftpaccess(4).

• The sublogin feature that is provided by the Solaris 8 FTP Server is not supported by the Solaris 9 FTP Server.