[Fspclient-users] Compatibility between old server and new client

[Samuele M. <sa...@no...>]

Hello,
Finally, after about 10 years, I can talk again about this (pretty) old 
protocol. I've found this list (and the fsp-{devel,users}) by hazard, 
only because alt.comp.fsp is still available on google (but is not 
available for subscription on any usenet feeder I have access to 
-sigh-). So, after this presentation, the question.

I still have an old server version up and running. If I try to connect 
using the old fspclient.0.0-h+ this is what I see:

> fsp> ver
> Version 2.8.0 (BETA 1), August 4th, 1995
>         logging:         yes            readonly:        no
>         reverse naming:  no             private:         no
>         thruput limited: no
> fsp> cd /
> -- directory `/':
>         owner:  no              delete: no              add:    no
>         mkdir:  no              read:   yes
> -- README:
> [...readmestuff...]

If I try to connect to this server using new client 0.0.7, I cannot read 
any directory, because the "list" option is by default off:

> fsp> ver
> Version 2.8.0 (BETA 1), August 4th, 1995
>         logging:         yes            readonly:        no
>         reverse naming:  no             private:         no
>         thruput limited: no
> fsp> cd /
> -- directory `/':
>         owner:  no              delete: no              add:    no
>         mkdir:  no              read:   yes             list:   no
> -- README:
> [...readmestuff...]

So, I think it should be better to check the version of the server, 
before to set the list option default, in order to allow/disallow this 
(new) list option and guarantee compatibility with older server versions 
(if the compatibility would be maintained...).
Probably old servers answer to CC GET PRO (0x47) with the bit 6 reset 
(it was not used), so this is mis-interpreted by new client, wich don't 
set "oldserver" variable correctly. It seems that function 
util_cache_protection in util.c should be changed a little in order to 
manage this problem. Is someone working on this problem?

Maybe this feature should be discussed in fsp-devel mailing list too...

Samuele

PS fspclient compiles very well under slackware 8.0 (with gcc 2.95.3), 
but there are a lot of warnings. I'll try other slackware versions in 
next days.