Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL!WANCHO From: WANCHO@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL ("Frank J. Wancho") Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip Subject: TENEX mode Message-ID: Date: 12 Feb 89 04:04:00 GMT References: Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 35 Vince, At the risk of belaboring the point, but only to avoid rewriting history, I must defer to you as the former maintainer of the FTP server we use here as the more knowledgeable on FTP matters (I'm just a late comer). However, I don't ever recall seeing the "tenex" command (not mode) (on Unix and bsd-derived systems only) as an alias for PAGED mode file transfers. It has always sent TYPE L 8 to the remote host and conditioned the local host to receive a binary file. PAGED mode was originally called XTP (eXperimental TENEX PAGED) mode by Bob Clements in RFC 683. The tenex command first appeared in some early version of user ftp in bsd4.1 or so. As far as I can tell, the tenex command was never documented in any RFC related to FTP, although it should have been because of a certain broken implementation which sent TYPE L 32 and still causes us no end of complaints and misunderstandings. On the other hand, let's not confuse TENEX with PAGED mode either. PAGED mode was originally devised for possibly holey TENEX/TOPS20 file transfers, and as long as we have another TENEX/TOPS20 machine to talk to, let's keep PAGED mode around. In spite of the fact that Barry says we shouldn't use it as a precedent, I propose that PAGED mode be considered a generic mode to transfer an exact copy of a file, including FDB and other information between two machines with the same operating system. Note that in the specification for PAGED mode, the exact format of the attribute and descriptor blocks is not given. It could easily be adapted by mutual agreement between user and server ftp implementors to the VMS problem currently under discussion. When it is used between VMS systems, it is understood to mean TYPE L wordsize instead of TYPE L 36 (all else being left the same). --Frank