earle@SUN.COM (Greg Earle) (07/14/89)
The latest documentation for the 4BSD `ftp' client program that I have lists
the following, in the description of the .netrc file:
account string
Supply an additional account password. If this token
is present, the auto-login process will supply the
specified string if the remote server requires an addi-
tional account password, or the auto-login process will
initiate an ACCT command if it does not.
The last half of this appears to be true, but the first half is not.
When one attempts to use this, one is always prompted for the `Account:'
string, no matter whether the `account [ string ]' is in the .netrc file or
not. An example, talking to a Univac system that requires an account:
myhost% cat ~/.netrc
machine univac login me password noseeum account 12345
myhost% ftp -v -t -d univac
Connected to univac.
220-File server ready for new user.
220 Enter USER user-id.
---> USER me
331 User-id received; Enter PASS password.
---> PASS noseeum
332 enter ACCT account[,project].
Account: ^C
myhost%
I found the following code chunk in /usr/src/ucb/ftp/ftp.c's login()
function, for every version of ftp.c I could find - SunOS 4.0.3,
4.3BSD-tahoe, and Rick Adams' post-Tahoe ftp on uunet.UU.NET:
myhost% sccs what uunet_ftp/ftp.c bsd-tahoe_ftp/ftp.c /usr/src/ucb/ftp/ftp.c
uunet_ftp/ftp.c:
ftp.c 5.28 (Berkeley) 4/20/89
bsd-tahoe_ftp/ftp.c:
ftp.c 5.24.1.3 (Berkeley) 3/1/89
/usr/src/ucb/ftp/ftp.c:
ftp.c 1.1 89/05/19 SMI; from 5.14 (Berkeley) 5/22/86
[ code chunk ]
...
n = command("USER %s", user);
if (n == CONTINUE) {
if (pass == NULL)
pass = getpass("Password:");
n = command("PASS %s", pass);
}
if (n == CONTINUE) {
aflag++;
acct = getpass("Account:");
n = command("ACCT %s", acct);
}
if (n != COMPLETE) {
fprintf(stderr, "Login failed.\n");
return (0);
}
if (!aflag && acct != NULL)
(void) command("ACCT %s", acct);
...
In other words, the code checks to see if the PASS has been loaded from the
.netrc, and if so, it sends it on. However, in the case of ACCT, it doesn't
check to see if it has been pre-loaded, and asks for it no matter what.
This seems so obvious that I thought I'd ask first before assuming it's a bug.
Am I missing something? Is there some reason for this?? i.e., why is the code
acct = getpass("Account:");
and not
if (acct == NULL)
acct = getpass("Account:");
just like it is for the sending of the password???
I have a customer who would like to use his .netrc file in conjunction
with a shell `here is' document to automate retrieval of files from this
Univac, and we're stuck by this. As you can see from the script, the
Univac machine demands the account at login time; so we can't just remove
the `account 12345' from .netrc and manually send it from the `here is'
document (as part of the standard input) once logged on.
Thanks,
- Greg Earle
earle@Sun.COM