The Whiteboard

user55340

12:33 AM

@Snowman in a different world, I would have been interested in being a Photographer Mate (PH). Its a MC now, and that would still be interesting. IT but, I'd also point out that having been in IT doing that, I'd rather dream.

Peter Scott

Anyone know why this is off-topic? programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/310745/…

user55340

> 1. Are there any FTPS servers that support server pre-processing? PHP specifically

user55340

That part is a recommendation question, which is why the question got closed.

user55340

> 2. Has anyone implemented such FTP pre-processing before, or has FTP always simply exposed a flat file-system?

user55340

That's more of a poll of experiences which tends not to work well - there's no problem to be solved.

user55340

12:36 AM

> 3. Are there any alternative protocols to ftp that better support server-side pre-processing but would still allow Windows Explorer integration? again, PHP specifically

user55340

That one gets back to the recommendation of technology...

Peter Scott

Alright... I was trying to pose specific questions to avoid the extremely broad 'how do I implement ftp pre-processing?'

So is preferred not to narrow the scope but to keep it to the high-level question?

user55340

@PeterScott What I would try doing is describing your system (you do a good job of that), and then point out the problem that you are having with FTPS.

user55340

The first question firmly more of a server fault direction thing...

user55340

though they would have similar problems with recommendations.

user55340

12:40 AM

To answer your question there though, I'd be looking more at WebDAV.

Peter Scott

@MichaelT Thanks; that gives me a direction to look in. I can edit the question if you think it's worth keeping, otherwise I'm inclined just to delete it.

user55340

Often the direction is enough... there's a bit more to dig into (looking)... its why chat is so nice often.

user55340

msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/…

user55340

Filesystem in Userspace

Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE) is an operating system mechanism for Unix-like computer operating systems that lets non-privileged users create their own file systems without editing kernel code. This is achieved by running file system code in user space while the FUSE module provides only a "bridge" to the actual kernel interfaces. The original, and commonly used implementation, is implemented as a loadable kernel module. Released under the terms of the GNU General Public License and the GNU Lesser General Public License, FUSE is free software. This implementation of FUSE is available for Linux...

user55340

That's something else to look into.

Jörg W Mittag

12:44 AM

My 2 cents:

Cent #1: Even though FTP means File Transfer Protocol, that does not mean that the "files" being transferred have to be "actual" files any more than HTTP documents have to be actual document files stored on the server. That's a sort-of answer to your question #2: no, I don't know specifically that anyone has done this, but it is certainly doable and sensible.

user55340

@JörgWMittag I did that with Gopher back in the day...

user55340

I still think of http and gopher as anonymous resource fetching protocols. And the resource can be dynamic.

user55340

The tricky part with ftp is all the ports that it plays with if you are going to try to write your own.

user55340

But, you could certainly do tricky things with having named pipes be available.

Jörg W Mittag

Cent #2: Even if you choose to interpret it as literally just transferring files from the server, that does not mean that those files have to be actual physical files on the harddisk. Think of the /proc or /sys filesystems on Linux (or the Windows Registry, which isn't a filesystem, but really should be). FUSE is a nice way of implementing virtual filesystems without being bound by the restrictions of a kernel-mode filesystem driver.

Oh yeah, named pipes would be another nice trick.

user55340

12:49 AM

(Redditfs implemented in FUSE : github.com/ianpreston/redditfs )

Jörg W Mittag

Or, just run your FTP server on Plan9 :-D

user55340

Named pipes were how I did dynamic in gopher days. Had a friend who had a named pipe for his .plan on unix that sent him an email each time someone did a finger. Got rather annoyed at me when I put that info out on IRC.

Peter Scott

Thanks to both of you. This is going to be a low-priority feature of the site but it's one that I find interesting. Particularly for 'non-techy' users, people tend to view windows-explorer as 'their computer' and a browser as 'the internet'. Offering file-system access seems like a powerful way to make our user's feel 'comfortable'.

Jörg W Mittag

WebDAV is kind-of like FTP with versions and metadata.

It didn't take off, really, but I believe it is supported by Windows Explorer.

Peter Scott

superuser.com/questions/494203/… apparantly it does

user55340

12:54 AM

@JörgWMittag svn uses webdav.

Jörg W Mittag

The Subversion network protocol is based (loosely) on WebDAV.

Ha!

I actually used to poke around on Subversion repos using Windows Explorer.

I think.

I don't quite remember.

It might have Nautilus.

Peter Scott

Finally... I see ground that is properly tread via Google search. WebDAV is looking promising. sabre.io/dav

Jörg W Mittag

Yep. Apparently, WebDAV is supported by Windows Explorer, OSX Finder, and the more feature-ful filesystem browsers on Unix/Linux (e.g. the defaults on Ubuntu, KUbuntu, SuSE, RedHat, etc.)

And I'm willing to bet there's a davfs FUSE somewhere out there.

Peter Scott

github.com/rianhunter/davfuse

Jörg W Mittag

IOW: the only people who are not going to have a filemanager supporting WebDAV are ones running minimalist Unix/Linux distribution, which are probably as far from your "dummy user" base as you can imagine.

Peter Scott

1:02 AM

yes, quite.

Jörg W Mittag

@PeterScott That's the opposite of what I meant, but also really cool!

Oh, right, how could I forget! CalDAV is based on WebDAV.

Peter Scott

Outside the confines of HTTP there be beautiful things.

I'm going to get back to some lovely API design. Thanks @MichaelT and @JörgWMittag for your help; a very useful chat.

user55340

@PeterScott any time.

Jimmy Hoffa

design... I need to check my placement on design again..

Jörg W Mittag

The beauty of DAV, WebDAV, and DeltaV is actually that it's just a couple of verbs added to HTTP.

No hassle with firewalls, proxies, and mature codebases to build WebDAV servers off of.

Jimmy Hoffa

1:08 AM

I remember using WebDAV for file management ages ago, and I believe I recall it being strongly equated with security risks but that was probably more due to the immaturity of web security when it first came around (and implementations of WebDAV) than the actual concept itself

I think that was one of the big things that killed it

Jörg W Mittag

I think it has its own permissions system, if I remember correctly.

That means you will end up with HTTP authentication, whatever WebDAV does, and access control to the underlying filesystem resources (if there are any). That's just looking for trouble.

user55340

2:39 AM

user55340

Magic Roundabout (Swindon)

The Magic Roundabout in Swindon, England was constructed in 1972 and consists of five mini-roundabouts arranged around a sixth central, anti-clockwise roundabout. Located near the County Ground, home of Swindon Town F.C. Its name comes from the popular children's television series The Magic Roundabout. In 2009 it was voted the fourth scariest junction in Britain, in a poll by Britannia Rescue. == History == === Concept === The roundabout was constructed according to the design of Frank Blackmore, of the British Transport and Road Research Laboratory, under the control of Traffic Engineer Raymond...

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT idea for an issue for the blog: Collect all the "10x developer rockstar" stuff into a single place; the empirical evidence (with the numbers, dates, details that have been largely criticized in various places) with the criticisms, and just tell the whole narrative. Mention the buzzwords as they are, where they came from (studies et al) and conclude on a position of "perhaps empiricism just can't quantify this stuff" which I think many people have come to.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Go to the issues. Put that text in the text box. Tag it 'topic'.

Jimmy Hoffa

I think there's a valid position backing the idea that you miaybe can't quantify it by falling back on the idea that it's art as much as anything else; and everyone knows you can't quantify the productivity of an artist

yeah. I will. In a few.

I don't think there's a stance to sell; just questions to raise more than anything which is a bit more interesting in my book. "Can we actually quantify this stuff? Are the empirical points accurate, inaccurate, or incapable? Can't know."

Duga

5:04 AM

Not giving you a hard time, but questions posted on stackoverflow should focus on a specific code-based problem and usually include example code for review. A question like yours is probably a better fit on Programmers. Again, no hassle, but I think you will get a better response on Programmers. — Sean Mickey 25 secs ago

user114359

5:25 AM

@JimmyHoffa apparently I earned a bronze medal for design

user114359

@MichaelT I do wish in my younger years that I would have lived a little... and risked life a little more. I don't have enough cool stories now :-(

Duga

6:03 AM

While I feel like there would've been a more polite way to explain the problems with the question, the other users are correct that this question is off-topic for Stack Overflow. There are other online resources that might be useful to you and, if you're able to re-word and contextualize your problem here some more, it might be On-topic for programmers.stackexchange.com (I'm not a member of that community however, so I can't speak definitively to their guidelines.) Hope that helps! — nbrooks 1 min ago

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