147341 - ftp:// URLs require additional forward slash to access root path

Status: CLOSED INVALID

(Core Graveyard :: Networking: FTP, defect)

Description

[Matthew Sullivan]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.0rc3)
Gecko/20020523
BuildID:    2002052306

When accessing my local ftp server using the URL:

ftp://[e-mail]/

The contents of my home directory (/home/matthew) were displayed.

To access the second disk I had to add an additional '/' making the URL:

ftp://[e-mail]//mnt/disk/

Submitted as 'major' as this is visible to end users (particually corporate)


Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Peter 'vt100' Schwindt]

Well, IMHO this is standard behaviour for 'web' clients for ftp. You always log
in into your home dir. So how to tell the client to walk to the root-dir if not
using double slashes?

Comment 2

[Bradley Baetz (:bbaetz)]

Yeah, this is a feature. / takes you to your home directory, // takes you to the
root dir. Its also spec compliant, apparently

Comment 3

[Jo Hermans]

As Peter said, this is perfectly normal. Assume that you have a "mnt" directory
in your home-directory. You do know the difference between "cd /mnt" and "cd
mnt", do you? This is just the same.

I agree that the double-slash looks silly, but it has always been like that.
It's mentioned in http://www.w3.org/Addressing/rfc1738.txt, section 3.2.2 (from
1994 !)

Comment 4

[Matthew Sullivan]

Hmm, well it may be worth documenting then, cause:

1/ It does look odd, even if it is logical.
2/ I've been around for a while, and never noticed the RFC comment. (admittedly
I haven't gone looking)
3/ I don't recall any other browser or FTP client that exibits this behavior.
(most other clients either perform a 'cd /' on login, the rest seem put the
actual path after login in the URL. - the exception is the latest IE I have
(5.5) which doen't allow you to use '//' either)

Comment 5

[Bradley Baetz (:bbaetz)]

I think its odd, too, esp because no other browser does it. ;)

However, since this tends to only affect non-anonyomus ftp (since anon ftp
almost always logs you in to / anyway), and there arne't likely to be links to
urls with username/password embedded, and the // form works in other browsers, I
was convinced.

Comment 6

[benc]

anonymous users often fail to understand that they are chrooted into an
filesystem just for anonymous users, mostly for security reasons. (Actually,
they are chrooted then cd'd into that root, if you want to be extra specfic).

Comment 7

[Peter 'vt100' Schwindt]

closed - invalid