Re: uid and gid values in the sftp protocol

From: Steve Turner (bbqboyee_at_H2OlooWoodworks.com)
Date: 08/27/04 

Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 15:17:06 GMT

Simon Tatham wrote:
> Steve Turner <bbqboyee@H2OlooWoodworks.com> wrote:
>
>>The SFTP protocol can send the integer uid and gid values for a file
>>back to a requesting client in an SSH_FXP_ATTRS packet, but I can see no
>>way for the client to map those integers to the human-readable string
>>that makes sense for the file as it exists on the server. The uid/gid
>>values for user "foo" need not be the same on both the client and the
>>server, so I can't see how a generic SFTP client can properly display
>>those values as meaningful strings. Any plans to offer a protocol
>>extension that will allow the mapping of uid/gid values to the correct
>>names?
>
>
> I proposed one on the ietf-ssh mailing list in 2001:
>
> http://www.tartarus.org/~simon/ssh/draft-sftp-userdb-00.txt
>
> Nobody seemed terribly interested at the time, although there was
> some follow-up discussion on this list in November 2001 (check the
> archives at ftp://ftp.ietf.org/ietf-mail-archive/secsh/ ).

Good information in that discussion. I found myself wanting to jump in
but my dang time machine is on the fritz this morning.

I didn't read all the way to the conclusion (if there was one), but I
presume it either died or the naysayers won out. Is any further
discussion on this issue expected? I hate it when good ideas like the
SFTP protocol become victims of stagnation by committee... 

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