openssh unix dev - Dec 2011 - Proposal for SFTP extension to include user name and group name in file attributes

Hello,

I've gathered from searching Bugzilla[1][2] that a patch to update
OpenSSH's SFTP implementation to support version 4 or above of the
protocol is unlikely to be accepted.

However, I find myself wishing for the name-based owner and group
handling specified in version 4 of the spec[3]. As a possible
compromise, if I submitted a patch to add an OpenSSH-specific extension
to return the user name & group name, how likely is it to be accepted?
This would use the extended_type:extended_data mechanism[4] present in
version 3.

This functionality could be useful to clients such as sshfs[5], allowing
file systems to be mounted from other servers with different uid/gid
mappings.

 [1] https://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1953#c1
 [2] https://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1632#c10
 [3] http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-secsh-filexfer-04#section-5.4
 [4] http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-secsh-filexfer-02#section-5
 [5] http://fuse.sourceforge.net/sshfs.html

-- 
Mike Kelly