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vijaykumar S.L. <address@hidden> described the package as follows:
License: gpl
Other License:
Package: Kernel mechanism for attaching network services to the file
system heirarchy
System name: ftpfs
This package wants to apply for inclusion in the GNU project
Description:
We are a group of students from Government Engineering College
Thrissur,India. We have developed a kernel mechanism to attach a major
network service ie. ftp. In our method the directory structure under
the ftp server is mounted to our own local filesystem. The mounting
will enable the ftp users to access ftp using the usual filesystem
commands like ls,cp,cat etc.
Please kindly look into our method and feedback us with your
valuable suggestions.
Adavantages
Our method has some advantages over ftp. The first one is that
due to the filesystem approach we can \'cp\' the files from anywhere
to anywhere. This anywhere to anywhere is important since ordinary
ftp can only \'get\' & \'put\' to current working directories.
(excluding the condition that the files cannot be transferred
within the ftp server directory structure. ie moving files within
ftpserver is not implemented.This can be overcome by mounting the same
ftp server to two different mount points in our local fs and doing
file transfer between them.)
Another advantage is that we can copy the directory trees
recursively due to this fs implementation.
The limitations are as follows.
1.Cannot use \'less\' command although we can use \'cat\' command.
(but ftp doesn\'t provide file viewing facility in its
services.Can only get files and then view it)
2.The network to network transfer is not possible.
ie. if we mount an ftp server to /mnt/floppy and suppose the
server has one file named \'hello.c\' and one directory called
\'new\'. We cannot do the following.
\"cp /mnt/floppy/hello.c /mnt/floppy/new/ \"
There is another way to do the same thing ie. mount the same
ftpserver to /mnt/floppy and /mnt/cdrom and do the following
command
\"cp /mnt/floppy/hello.c /mnt/cdrom/new/\".
THE USAGE
copy the directory ftpfs attached to this mail and make using
the makefile in it. insert the module. then using mount command as
follows mount the ftpserver.
\"mount -t ftpfs none /mnt/floppy -o
ip=IPADDR,user=USERNAME,pass=PASSWORD\"
IPADDR is the IP address of the ftp server.
USERNAME is the username of the account.
PASSWORD is the password for that account.
It does not exist yet but I\'m working on it.