261479 - sftp and ssh not working

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 39714

(Core :: Networking, enhancement)

Description

[Paul Kruger]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10

currently konqueror supports using the sftp://username:[e-mail]
and most important fish://username:[e-mail]
fish = ssh

I need to be able to do file transfers with ssh in mozilla as I and other web
developers use this feature all the time.
It would be nice to have it set as
ssh://username:[e-mail]/directory etc 

thanks

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.type in ssh: sftp:// or fish:// and none work


Actual Results:  
protocal not supported

Expected Results:  
expect to have this feature work just like an ftp site would

Comment 1

[Peter Weilbacher]

I guess one could come up with hundreds of other protocols that are all not
supported at the moment. Can you not use network.protocol-handler.external.xxx,
applications.xxx trick in the user.js or some extension like Launchy or MozEx to
do what you want?

Comment 2

[Paul Kruger]

(In reply to comment #1)
> I guess one could come up with hundreds of other protocols that are all not
> supported at the moment. Can you not use network.protocol-handler.external.xxx,
> applications.xxx trick in the user.js or some extension like Launchy or MozEx to
> do what you want?

I belive your refering to a clickable link in a web page..
thats no good... all of the external applications that do this 
are too complicated for normal users. When I want a user to 
securely download a file I dont want to have to walk them through
installing an external application and then have them do odd hacks to get at
files. I would like to be able to have them install the browser and send a link
via email that will open in there browser for secure download.
or allow them to upload a file to a secure directory on the fly...
this feature is just like the ftp://username:[e-mail] feature...
training the common user to use ssh in any of the standard programs is no good.
its too complicated and confusing.. I hear cant you just give me a link...
for quick and dirty file downloads to directories that standard ftp is unsafe
it would be better to have the browser support it....
I dont understand your scarcasm about the 100's of other protocals...
as if you were implying that i might be suggesting telnet or some wacky thing...
obv someone else has already include it...
please look at konqueror implementation... 
here is a link to a screenshot 
http://www.rocklinux-consulting.de/products/drock/screens/kde-ioslaves.jpg
you will notice on the bottom right konq running ssh
konq can also be used as a browser... file transfer agent 
supports split window(two locations) etc etc...

on almost every good web hosting companies server they give ssh access to
the user directories.. since users feel ok with the browser this is the best
reason to implement this... 

Please dont post scarcastic messages, I am trying to get a feature that would be
of great help. I dont know why mozilla project wouldnt want to say they support
the most secure of file transfer protocals....

Comment 3

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Because I don't think we want to write an ssh client from scratch, and I'm not
sure whether we want to rely on linking to third-party ssh code.

I'm pretty sure Konqueror in fact runs the ssh application in the background (so
the user needs to have it installed on the machine).

Over to networking, but this is likely to be wontfix.

Comment 4

[Darin Fisher]

This works fine if you have a Gnome 2.6 desktop (e.g., Fedora Core 2).  The GTK2
builds of Mozilla load libgnomevfs-2.so and uses that to provide sftp:// and
smb:// if it is available.  It's possible to enable other Gnome VFS protocols as
well, but for now we only allow those two.  The intent was to allow users of
Nautilus to drag-n-drop smb:// links into Mozilla, and as a by-product we were
able to easily support sftp:// because Gnome VFS provides that too.

Incorporating actual support for an SSH client can and should be implemented as
an extension.

WONTFIX

Or, as I understand there to be renewed work on the KDE port of Mozilla, you
might find that there is some KDE API that can be leveraged to provide this.  If
so, then maybe that is something to pursue.  But, I don't think we want to get
into the game of embedding SSH.

Comment 5

[Paul Kruger]

do you use a 3rd party ftp client so that foxfire can implement ftp?
http, https, ftp, sftp, ssh, and smb - should all work in any browser window.
the community of extention developers most likely will not develop the ssh or
sftp integration 
this should be left to the pros not the ametures..
I dont think the community could implement this... I think its a core feature..
if i was asking for a bit torrent client or something of that nature built in 
it would be an entirely different story...

Comment 6

[Darin Fisher]

> do you use a 3rd party ftp client so that foxfire can implement ftp?

ftp has been a supported browser protocol since forever.


> http, https, ftp, sftp, ssh, and smb - should all work in any browser window.

why?  i could see some users appreciating sftp, ssh, and smb support, but most
users probably won't care.  smb:// is anyways supported for free under windows
via file://.  windows users certainly don't need smb:// except for parity with
gnomevfs, but that's only going to apply to a very small number of users.  most
users won't care for these other protocols.


> the community of extention developers most likely will not develop the ssh or
> sftp integration

well, i didn't say that they would.  i said that they could.  the gecko
interfaces that one would need to implement to drop in support for ssh:// are
all (mostly) frozen, so it is possible to create a high quality extension for
this sort of thing.

 
> this should be left to the pros not the ametures..

sure, but that can be said of a lot of software ;-)


> I dont think the community could implement this... I think its a core feature..

no, see my comment regarding frozen interfaces.  nsIProtocolHandler, nsIURI,
nsIURL, and nsIChannel are all frozen, and those are the interfaces one would
need to implement.


it is important to weigh the benefits of any feature addition against the number
of users who will care.  in this case, i believe the number of users who would
care is limited.  i doubt it is worth the code bloat.  Linux users, who are
probably the only ones who would care, at least have the option of GnomeVFS when
they are using Linux.

Of course, patches are always welcome.  If someone wants to create a small,
high-quality patch for this, then I would surely re-evaluate my stance at that
point.  But, at the moment, I don't plan on working on this, and I think there
are many more important things to fix in Mozilla besides this.

Comment 7

[Paul Kruger]

linux users are not the only people in the world who care about ssh support...
most corp enviroments are windows desktops with windows file server and unix db
machines... 

quite often people need to access unix servers... 
most people who are would be users of unix are forced to use windows because 
of applications that cannot be port to unix..

to think that groups are running one os over another is quite false...
people are home might run duel boot machines or virtual machines or emulated
systems to gain these features...

most users dont either use linux or windows 
most people use both...
when I used to to IT work it was a common situation 
for us to travel from machine to machine all day long
i dont know how many times I would need to install an ssh client on every machine
only to have to remove it due to the fact that it didnt qualify
as corp load software...

it was great to be able to use \\ip\machine for the windows machines 
and gain access to anything but for the most part gaining access to unix machines
was very difficult... and timetaking process...

if your stand is that no one would be interested in this being 
incorporated into mozilla why dont you ask the people in the forums if 
they want ssh support? rather than making assumptions...

ssh is not a linux thing
i use ssh everyday.... on xp
we could check the number of times putty has been downloaded for windows...
or scp has been downloaded for windows

most web developers use dreamweaver... 
and connect to a unix server....
even dreamweaver supports ssh ... and sftp...

if you want to make this an issue that it should be an extention 
i might buy it 
but i really know its your way of blowing this issue off...
its very important to get ssh support in a browser on the windows platform...


 

Comment 8

[Paul Kruger]

i just checked out the forums and there are 8 ssh threads 
I only started 1 so....
I am thinking your default answer to any feature requests is no
until you get enough people asking for it... 
I didnt realise how many people have already requested this in the forum...
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=8
click on search and set for foxfire features

Comment 9

[[e-mail]]

One argument to support these could be that it might help to get rid of the
anachronistic and insecure ftp: protocol. Sure, Mozilla should not support all
protocols Konqueror does, but to support this one sounds like a good and
future-oriented idea. 

Comment 10

[Merve]

ssh is a protocol that should be supported. Many mail servers are only
accessible via ssh. I have been reduced to checking some of my e-mail with pine
through PuTTY! It might not be the most popular idea, but most people would not
mind having ssh capability.

Comment 11

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

that makes no sense. ssh is a way to login to remote servers, not to do
arbitrary encrpytion.

Comment 12

[Paul Kruger]

actually the ssh protocal can be used to encrpypt traffic

Comment 13

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

yes, and it's the easiest way to create a SSH-tunnel. i can't see a reason to
implement this in Mozilla..

Comment 14

[B Bonfield]

I think it's a shame the person who originally reported this bug wasn't more
aware of how difficult sftp would be to implement. That said, I've now found
three extensions/projects I cannot use because sftp is not part of the
mozilla/firefox core:

1. The Bookmarks Synchronizer extension:

https://update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&id=14&vid=15&page=comments

20+ mentions in the thread

2. NVU

http://forum.nvudev.org/search.php (can't create direct link to search results)

Mentioned in five different threads (as of 12/10/2004)


3. fireFTP

http://fireftp.mozdev.org/forum.html/no_wrap (again, I can't create a direct
link to search results)

Mentioned in four different threads (as of 12/10/2004)

I did not go Googling for projects to document--I found these programs over the
past few months when I went searching for programs that would help me accomplish
everyday tasks. Each of these programs could help me to do things I want to
do--synchronizing my bookmarks across multiple computers, WYSIWYG (X)HTML
authoring, and simple file transfer from within my browser--but I won't use them
because I won't pass my server login/password combo in an insecure manner. Yes,
there are workarounds: WinSCP is a lovely program; Foxylicious does much of what
I would do with the Bookmarks Synchronizer extension. But despite his stridency
and lack of respect for the work involved, I do think the original poster's
point was a good one: I believe the Internet would be a bit safer and Mozilla
would be a better engine if it had native support for secure file transfer. 

Comment 15

[Zook Valem]

FTPS issues is related to bug #85464.  SSH is well, a different story.

Comment 16

[Jim Seavey]

(In reply to comment #1)
> I guess one could come up with hundreds of other protocols that are all not
> supported at the moment. Can you not use network.protocol-handler.external.xxx,
> applications.xxx trick in the user.js or some extension like Launchy or MozEx to
> do what you want?

In this day and age anyone who is willing to transmit a uid and password over
the internet does not understand the risk.

The days of the internet being a friendly place have long passed. I remember
what it was like in the late 70's and early 80's and things were much different
then.

Security protocols are needed by everyone. I don't know of anyone who
understands these issues who access their email without using SSL,APOP or SSH
Tunneling. The same for FTP. If the browser is going to support FTP it needs to
provide support for a secure portocol as well - SSH is just a natural extension
for this.

Comment 17

[Paul Kruger]

I am glad that over time my issue is gaining attention.
the person that replied to this post 
does not seem to know the first thing about the web 
I would say that all the plain text protocols were dead 2 years ago
and the only thing that was stoping the secure protocols was the goverment,
hackers, lazy developers who dont want to ensure the securty of the average user.

Please resubmit this feature it is critial to the security of the browser and
most clients

Comment 18

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 19

[emmet]

This feature request is still relevant. ftp is being (has been) phased out in
many insitutions and replaced by sftp/ssh use. 

Bug 179456 (use sftp for remote calendaring in Sunbird) depends on this bug.

Comment 20

[Jo Hermans]

(In reply to comment #19)
> This feature request is still relevant. ftp is being (has been) phased out in
> many insitutions and replaced by sftp/ssh use. 
> 
> Bug 179456 (use sftp for remote calendaring in Sunbird) depends on this bug.
> 

sftp and ssh support was WONTFIX'ed in bug 39714, because they're not official
IANA-registered URL scheme names.

And we also have some licensing issues - see ssh.com vs openssh.com. If this
every get implemented, it will be thru an extension or external protocol handlers.

I can agree that sftp support would be handy, but ssh (or telnet) doesn't belong
in a browser. That's definetely extension material.

Comment 21

[Andy Boze]

(In reply to comment #19)
> This feature request is still relevant. ftp is being (has been) phased out in
> many insitutions and replaced by sftp/ssh use. 
> 
> Bug 179456 (use sftp for remote calendaring in Sunbird) depends on this bug.
> 
Just wanted to keep this alive. Now that roaming profiles are supported in SeaMonkey, having sftp as an available protocol would be extremely useful. My institution phased out ftp two years ago, leaving only one server open to ftp, and even then limited only to our own network. That last ftp server has just been decommissioned, so the only file transfer protocol now in use is sftp.

Comment 22

[Darin Fisher]

-> reassign to default owner

Comment 23

[Tuomas]

I agree, Mozilla/Firefox should have proper SFTP support. Same goes actually for regular FTP since it's not capable uploading files.

Why I'm requesting this is because the current method in uploading and downloading files from web sites is pretty difficult. HTTP upload is not easy to use and it has many disadvantages. FTP/SFTP is meant for file transfers.

I'm a web developer and I have created some web applications that integrate the use of FTP for file transfers (for example inside iframe objects). In internet explorer the user can drag n drop files or even whole directories he wants to upload or download.

Please at least consider adding this feature.

Comment 24

[Moritz Strübe]

Plaese mark as dup of Bug #39714.
Cheers.