bug#56518: Drop rsh/rlogin/remsh from Ange FTP

bug#56518: Drop rsh/rlogin/remsh from Ange FTP

[Stefan Kangas]

Severity: wishlist

Assuming that Ange FTP is still relevant these days, its documentation
should not be talking about using "rsh", "rlogin" and "remsh" (as they
are obsolete).  Please rewrite its documentation to talk about SSH
instead.

(I note that Firefox and Chrome dropped FTP support in 2021.
And the FSF has sunset their FTP servers.)

bug#56518: Drop rsh/rlogin/remsh from Ange FTP

[Michael Albinus]

Stefan Kangas <stefan@marxist.se> writes:

Hi Stefan,

> Assuming that Ange FTP is still relevant these days, its documentation
> should not be talking about using "rsh", "rlogin" and "remsh" (as they
> are obsolete).  Please rewrite its documentation to talk about SSH
> instead.

These programs are mentioned in relation to "gateways". That is, if you
cannot access the FTP server from your local machine, you can connect to
that gateway (via rsh or alike) and start the ftp client on that
machine.

I guess we shall remove gateways at all from ange-ftp.el, because I
don't know whether they work with ssh or friends. At least, they shall
be made obsolete.

A proper replacement would be to improve Tramp's multi-hop, and support
remote file names like "/ssh:gateway|ftp:server:/path/to/file". Anything
goes, but is it really worth the trouble? It won't be trivial.

OTOH, I have no idea whether there's still somebody using Ange FTP with
gateways.

> (I note that Firefox and Chrome dropped FTP support in 2021.
> And the FSF has sunset their FTP servers.)

Sigh.

Best regards, Michael.

bug#56518: Drop rsh/rlogin/remsh from Ange FTP

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Stefan Kangas <stefan@marxist.se>
> Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2022 09:55:12 -0500
> 
> (I note that Firefox and Chrome dropped FTP support in 2021.
> And the FSF has sunset their FTP servers.)

Sic transit gloria mundi!

bug#56518: Drop rsh/rlogin/remsh from Ange FTP

[Michael Albinus]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> (I note that Firefox and Chrome dropped FTP support in 2021.
>> And the FSF has sunset their FTP servers.)
>
> Sic transit gloria mundi!

Yep. But we're Emacs; it will take some further decades before we
obsolete the whole ange-ftp.el package. Not before major Linux distros
ban the ftp packages from their repos.

Best regards, Michael.

bug#56518: Drop rsh/rlogin/remsh from Ange FTP

[Robert Pluim]

>>>>> On Wed, 13 Jul 2022 11:53:58 +0200, Michael Albinus <michael.albinus@gmx.de> said:

    Michael> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
    >>> (I note that Firefox and Chrome dropped FTP support in 2021.
    >>> And the FSF has sunset their FTP servers.)
    >> 
    >> Sic transit gloria mundi!

    Michael> Yep. But we're Emacs; it will take some further decades before we
    Michael> obsolete the whole ange-ftp.el package. Not before major Linux distros
    Michael> ban the ftp packages from their repos.

Telnet is already hard to obtain in many distributions, ftp canʼt be
far behind (although thereʼs always curl 🙂)

Robert
-- 

bug#56518: Drop rsh/rlogin/remsh from Ange FTP

[Michael Albinus]

Robert Pluim <rpluim@gmail.com> writes:

Hi Robert,

>     Michael> Yep. But we're Emacs; it will take some further decades before we
>     Michael> obsolete the whole ange-ftp.el package. Not before major Linux distros
>     Michael> ban the ftp packages from their repos.
>
> Telnet is already hard to obtain in many distributions, ftp canʼt be
> far behind (although thereʼs always curl 🙂)

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
Fedora 36:

# dnf list telnet
Last metadata expiration check: 0:03:43 ago on Wed 13 Jul 2022 12:31:15 PM CEST.
Installed Packages
telnet.x86_64                       1:0.17-86.fc36                       @fedora

Ubuntu 22.04:

# apt list telnet
Listing... Done
telnet/jammy,now 0.17-44build1 amd64 [installed]
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

What counts for us are the (telnet, ftp) clients. The servers will still
live on old routers, NAS boxes, you name it, and those machines won't
run a modernish ssh server for access.

> Robert

Best regards, Michael.

bug#56518: Drop rsh/rlogin/remsh from Ange FTP

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Robert Pluim <rpluim@gmail.com>
> Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>,  Stefan Kangas <stefan@marxist.se>,
>   56518@debbugs.gnu.org
> Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2022 12:09:20 +0200
> 
> >>>>> On Wed, 13 Jul 2022 11:53:58 +0200, Michael Albinus <michael.albinus@gmx.de> said:
> 
>     Michael> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
>     >>> (I note that Firefox and Chrome dropped FTP support in 2021.
>     >>> And the FSF has sunset their FTP servers.)
>     >> 
>     >> Sic transit gloria mundi!
> 
>     Michael> Yep. But we're Emacs; it will take some further decades before we
>     Michael> obsolete the whole ange-ftp.el package. Not before major Linux distros
>     Michael> ban the ftp packages from their repos.
> 
> Telnet is already hard to obtain in many distributions, ftp canʼt be
> far behind (although thereʼs always curl 🙂)

And wget.

What about ncftp, though?

bug#56518: Drop rsh/rlogin/remsh from Ange FTP

[Visuwesh]

[Wednesday July 13, 2022] Robert Pluim wrote:

> Telnet is already hard to obtain in many distributions, ftp canʼt be
> far behind (although thereʼs always curl 🙂)

Don't the BSD people use ftp a fair bit?  At least, OpenBSD has a ftp
command OOTB.  [ This command can also do http(s) IIRC.  ]