openssh unix dev - Feb 2005 - FTP specific port forwarding

Hi

I've been looking at a both openssh and couple of commercial SSH
implementations(F-Secure and ssh comm.).

The one thing I see as missing is the "nice-to-have" feature of FTP
specific port forwarding.
The commercial implementations allows a syntax of "-L
ftp/<someport>:..." which does some "automagical" 
forwarding of the
data channel "under the hood"

I don't know if it has been discussed before but I saw someone submit
a" quote, "quick and dirty" patch to implement a basic
functionality
of this.
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=openssh-unix-dev&m=108163477118963&w=2
The person seemed willing to clean it up if there was any interest to
include it in the codebase.

I know there's the always the sftp way instead of FTP over SSH,
however in the cases where secure communication is needed for "AS-IS"
systems this would be a nice to have feature.
I've previously used wu-ftpd where I've set "passive address"
and
"passive ports" in ftpaccess file, and set up tunnels for all the
passive ports. However the maintenance  gets horrendus in the long
term. And getting lots of "425: address already in use" errors when
the port range is not big enough.

Just a thought

thanks,
Henrik Bentel

Henrik Bentel wrote:
> I've been looking at a both openssh and couple of commercial SSH
> implementations(F-Secure and ssh comm.).
> 
> The one thing I see as missing is the "nice-to-have" feature of
FTP
> specific port forwarding.
> The commercial implementations allows a syntax of "-L
> ftp/<someport>:..." which does some "automagical" 
forwarding of the
> data channel "under the hood"
FWIW DynamicForward should already work with a SOCKSified FTP client in 
passive mode.

-- 
Darren Tucker (dtucker at zip.com.au)
GPG key 8FF4FA69 / D9A3 86E9 7EEE AF4B B2D4  37C9 C982 80C7 8FF4 FA69
     Good judgement comes with experience. Unfortunately, the experience
usually comes from bad judgement.

On Fri, Feb 25, 2005 at 09:23:39AM +1100, Darren Tucker
wrote:
> Henrik Bentel wrote:
> >The one thing I see as missing is the "nice-to-have" feature
of FTP
> >specific port forwarding.
> 
> FWIW DynamicForward should already work with a SOCKSified FTP client
> in passive mode.
Or just get a VPN solution. openvpn.net is nice.


//Peter