[SLUG] FTP

[Al Girling]

On Friday 25 October 2002 9:00 pm, Will wrote:
> ftp is a very old protocol and is increasingly frowned upon because -- like
> telnet -- it sends unencrypted passwords down the wire which can easily be
> captured by somebody-else-who-may-be-up-to-no-good. However, for stuff like
> anonymous transfers it is rather good.

What alternative do you suggest?

> My understanding is that both GSSAPI and KERBEROS_V4 are ways of providing
> encrypted authentication. (AFAIK they have *nothing* to do with ftp per se
> but I could see how these could be useful.

So I'm seeing a response from the ftp server, telling me that neither GSSAPI 
or KERBEROS are accepted as encryption devices?

> Without knowing stuff like what ftp program you are using or what ftp site
> you are connecting to, it becomes difficult to say. Is this accross this
> internet? or something you have configured locally? I would only expect to
> see stuff like this if you were connecting locally to an ftp daemon running
> on the local machine as this looks like some kind of NIS or PAM
> configuration response. Hmmm.

I'm using the ftp programme that came as standard with Mandrake 8.2.  I've 
tried to find the exact name by looking in the software manager with the 
result, ftp-client-krb5-1.2.2-17mdk.  Whatever it is I type ftp at the 
command line and I'm away! :)   The sites I've had these responses from range 
from the xitami server on Mark's PC, ftp.eff.org a site suggested in an 
excercise for Sams 'Teach yourself Unix', ftp.oreilly.com and ftp.ibiblio.org 
which are connected with an anonymous login.  Does this give you something to 
work on.

> >Or should I configure any files on my local machine to stop this?
>
> Hmmm. There are rather a lot of configuration files on a linux box. Could
> you be a bit more specific?

I was thinking of an ftp config file of some type.  I imagine that the ftp 
client can be altered in various ways from the config file.  I don't know 
enough to be more specific I'm afraid.

I'm not even sure that this is a problem.  It just seems to be a form of 
error message and I hoped to correct whatever is wrong.

Regards

Al