[HECnet] VMS FTP server?

[Sampsa Laine]

On 8 Jan 2015, at 13:59, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:

Now, wait a minute.
So you have problems with GUI ftp clients and servers. So you go for kermit for file transfers. Which means going command line.
If you go command line, what's wrong with command line ftp, which will work without the silly issues of GUI tools?
You can create scripts for ftp as well...

And ftp deals just as well with the different types of files as kermit do.

	Johnny

Well, basically, I don't really use FTP.  

I mostly use SFTP when updating my websites, hosting setup etc, and for that I use a graphical client since the hosting is Unixy so everything works nicely - I just happened to try connect to a VMS box with Transmit.app and it was seriously borked, so I thought I'd mention it.

When I was mostly playing with Alphas and IA64 boxes, I'd use a set of scripts around command-line SFTP because it wasn't as broken as Transmit :)

Now I'm usually logged into the following:

	- GORVAX over Telnet (VAX)
	- HILANT over Telnet (VAX)
	- CHIMPY over SSH (AXP)

Anyway, I don't run SSH on my VAXes (and something in somewhere* router is messing with the FTP, even in passive mode) so I started playing around with Kermit scripts and eventually found them so convenient that I now mostly use Kermit over SSH instead of the SFTP scripts.

Summa summarum: I use SFTP in normal situations for file transfer where available, most of the time. If it's not, I use Kermit over Telnet. And I run Kermit over SSH as well since it does no harm AND gives me the ability to pull or push files in-band should I feel the need to :)

Sampsa

* My current connection in Lebanon is NAT'd from the ISP, god knows what they might be doing to the FTP connection