142563 - Publishing to Netscape "MyWebPage" site with subdirectory creates file with subdirectory name

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(SeaMonkey :: Composer, defect)

Description

[Charles Manske]

1. If you don't have one, setup an account using your Netscape-AOL screen name. 
Note that you can't use the username associated with you Netscpape-AOL account 
(the one tied to your SecureID.) See http://mywebpage.netscape.com/.
2. Setup a Publish Site in either the "Edit | Publish Settings" dialog or click
on "New" in the "File | Publish As" dialog.
3. Fill in site data:
Site Name: whatever youwant. Your screen name is a good start!
Publish URL: ftp://ftp.mywebpage.netscape.com/
HTTP address to browse to: http://mywebpage.netscape.com/<screenname>/
User name: <screenname>
Password: password associated with that screen name.
4. If you haven't published here before, you probably want to publish a simple 
file to this site to be sure it works. Do *not* use any subdirectory in the 
Publish Panel of the Publish dialog.
5. Publish again, but enter a non-existing name in the "Site subdirectory for
this page" input field. E.g.: "testdir".
6. Click on Publish button. 
Publishing will appear to succeed, but it did not create a "testdir" 
subdirectory and publish the file to the filename you gave it, it created 
a file named "testdir".

You can directly browse to the web page to confirm this:
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/<screenname>/tesdir

You can also use the "File Manager" tool at "MyWebPage" site to view this:
http://my.screenname.aol.com/_cqr/login/login.psp?siteId=mtNSUS&authLev=1&mcState=initialized
and click on "Browse my files" button to see your website filelist.
You will see "testdir" in that list, and if you click on it, you will see the
contents of the file you just published. It is *not* a subdirectory.

Expected: With other FTP sites we have tested, we get an error alert dialog
with a message such as "550 testdir/filename.html: No such file or directory"
because FTP servers do not usually automatically create a subdirectory during
FTP upload.

This is a very bad situation, since now the document URL has been set to 
whatever filename the user entered in the Publish dialog, but this is not the
actual filename. Thus all images and links are now broken (any attempt to
upload images with the file really mess things up further!)
Given the importance of the new Publish feature, it would look very bad if it
did not work well with Netscape servers, thus this bug should be a very high
priortity to fix for RTM.

Dougt: Can you please debug this to confirm if it is an error in the client
(I hope!) or with the Netscape servers? I'll attach an FTP log soon..

Comment 1

[Charles Manske]

Attachment: FTP log publishing "NewTest.html" file to "testdir" subdirectory

Comment 2

[Doug Turner (:dougt)]

When I try to register/logon to screenname, I get an error message:

Screen Name Service

Sorry, An Error Occurred.

Missing siteId.

Comment 3

[Kathleen :Brade]

try removing your cookies?
I wasn't able to publish at all because I couldn't logon (I couldn't get past
login screens); removing all netscape/aol and related cookies seemed to fix it
for me.

Comment 4

[Doug Turner (:dougt)]

What do you want me to do about this?  The server appears to be setup to create 
subdirectories when the STOR param includes a slash.  

Shouldn't the correct fix be to address the sites that don't create stub 
directories?  Like maybe send a mkdir command so that all the subdirectories 
are created?

This is WONTFIX.  

Comment 5

[Charles Manske]

Well, we certainly have to do *something* about this bug. "Wontfix" is not the 
correct response! We will look very stupid if we let this slip through.

Dougt: your claim that "The server appears to be setup to create subdirectories
when the STOR param includes a slash." doesn't seem quite right, though. It is not
creating a subdirectory, it is creating a *file* using the subdirectory's name.

Comment 6

[Charles Manske]

Adding reference to bug 64314, which addresses support for mkdir, etc.
Dougt: Can we at least detect when a server tries to do what the NS server is 
doing? Can we test for existence of a subdir first? In latter case, we could
stop the publish request, inform user, and let them pick a different subdirectory.

Comment 7

[Charles Manske]

Bug in comment above should be bug 64214, of course.

Comment 8

[Doug Turner (:dougt)]

I spoke with charley this afternoon and he clear things up a bit.  

when we upload a file to foo/bar.html where foo is a directory that does not
exist,  the result is that foo contains the contents of bar.html.  foo/bar.html
is not created.

Comment 9

[Charles Manske]

Note that if a subdirectory at the MyWebPage site is created using the 
MyWebPage filemanager facilities or by any standard FTP program (I used WS_FTP), 
then we can publish a file to that subdirectory correctly.

Comment 10

[Charles Manske]

Since there doesn't seem to be any problem in FTP code, I'll take this bug.

Comment 11

[Bradley Baetz (:bbaetz)]

How does one check that a directory exists? CD into it, I guess. This isn't
quite the same as 64214. hmm. Maybe the ftp code should just do this
automatically, int eh backend, if its storing to somewhere?

Comment 12

[Charles Manske]

Bradley or Doug: If one of you could supply a "check if directory exists" 
method, that would obviously be great!

Comment 13

[Bradley Baetz (:bbaetz)]

Just try listing it, and see if you get an error or not. We can't determine the
difference between "dir not there" and permission errors, though....

Comment 14

[Kathleen :Brade]

This is a server issue; we should test again in a month and see if they have
fixed their ftp daemon.

Comment 15

[Jeff Szeto]

The Home Pages Dev team has decided to make a change to FTP Daemon that supports
FTP for mywebpage.  The change will prompt users an error message if user is
trying to upload a file that has a sub-directory in the remote filename.  The
change will be in Release1.4 which will be in QA around early-July 2002.

Comment 16

[Charles Manske]

That is great news. I just wish it could be fixed earlier. 
We need to add a release note for the Beta.
Robin: Who should do that?

Comment 17

[robinf]

I will write the release note for beta. To summarize - is the current problem
that users will see what you've initially described in this bug? I.e, users
won't get a "directory not found" error and the file will be published to the
name of the non-existent directory? 

What is the suggested workaround?

Comment 18

[Charles Manske]

Yes, the file *is* created with a filename = subdirectory name, and it doesn't
have the ".html" extension, which makes it real confusing!
Workaround is 1) Don't use subdirectories or 2) Be sure any subdirectory you 
use already exists. Use a standard FTP program to view your site to confirm this.
Note that folder/subdirectory names are case-sensitive.
You could also use the Filemanager feature at the MyWebPage site.
In either case, user must be careful to pay attention to the icon for a file vs. 
a folder to be sure what they see is a folder (subdirectory).
They should use those programs to delete any files they have created because
of this bug.

Comment 19

[Charles Manske]

I tested this today and the problem still exists.

Comment 20

[Samir Gehani]

-> rebron

Comment 21

[Samir Gehani]

Editor triage team: nsbeta1+/adt3

Comment 22

[Rafael Ebron (:rebron)]

Request made to new owners: [e-mail] and Sabrina Doerpinghaus
[e-mail]