FTP does not behave as normal servers do

[tbee]

I tried to access the FTP service using Apache VFS (both 1.0 an 2.0-SNAPSHOT) and failed. After some debugging, it turned out that VFS is using compound paths in the CD and file read/write commands. Alfresco's FTP server doesn't seem to accept this.

For example:

CD /Alfresco/Documents‍

This must be done against an Alfresco FTP server as:

CD /
CD Alfresco
CD Documents‍‍‍

Same goes for reading and writing; first the working directory needs to be set to the directory of the file and then the file can be accessed, so not:

open /Alfresco/Documents/test.pdf‍

But:

CD /
CD Alfresco
CD Documents
open test.pdf‍‍‍‍

As was able to patch the VFS FTP client to work like this, so the issue is workable now and I hope Apache will accept the patch. But maybe Alfresco should considering supporting this behavior…

[mrogers]

That seems reasonable since, according to the FTP standard, CWD is followed by a pathname and pathname can include directory separator characters.

Please raise enhancement requests for the JLAN project in issues.alfresco.com.

[tbee]

Done.
https://issues.alfresco.com/jira/browse/JLAN-104