Re: your mail
Christopher Klaus (cklaus@shadow.net)
Sun, 15 May 94 0:19:45 EDT
>
> From: Paul Robinson <PAUL@TDR.COM>
> Organization: Tansin A. Darcos & Company, Silver Spring, MD USA
> -----
> Brent Chapman <brent@greatcircle.com>, writes:
>
> > The problem is, how would the Archie servers determine the
> > checksums? The Archie servers don't download all the files; they
> > merely connect to each FTP server and get a recursive directory
> > listing, which they then massage into their database. To get the
> > checksums, they'd either have to download every file (very
> > impractical, given the amount of stuff out there), or get the checksum
> > info from the FTP server they're talking to. There's currently no
> > standard way (hell, there's not even any reasonably COMMON way) to get
> > checksum info from FTP servers.
>
> Which brings up another question: WHICH checksum do they use?
>
> Most useful, say, for MSDOS clients would be the CRC-32 checksum which is
> used by Zmodem and PKZIP, and a file stored in a Zip archive, if checked
> on a file, would match.
>
> On a Unix site, the two-word result from 'sum' would be appropriate and
> most useful.
No way. sum is easily changed to any value you want. i suggest something
as strong as md5.
>
> For other places, MD5 would be better and provides a stronger check than
> CRC-32.
>
> So which do you use, and how do you know which of these you are getting?
> And how do we get a CRC request added to the list of FTP commands, or
> the data supplied from them?
>
> ---
> Paul Robinson - Paul@TDR.COM
> Voted "Largest Polluter of the (IETF) list" by Randy Bush <randy@psg.com>
> -----
> The following Automatic Fortune Cookie was selected only for this message:
>
> Lassie looked brilliant, in part because the farm family she
> lived with was made up of idiots. Remember? One of them was always
> getting pinned under the tractor, and Lassie was always rushing back to
> the farmhouse to alert the other ones. She'd whimper and tug at their
> sleeves, and they'd always waste precious minutes saying things: "Do
> you think something's wrong? Do you think she wants us to follow her?
> What is it, girl?", etc., as if this had never happened before, instead
> of every week. What with all the time these people spent pinned under
> the tractor, I don't see how they managed to grow any crops
> whatsoever. They probably got by on federal crop supports, which
> Lassie filed the applications for.
> -- Dave Barry
>
>
--
Christopher William Klaus <cklaus@shadow.net> <iss@shadow.net>
Internet Security Systems, Inc.
2209 Summit Place Drive,Dunwoody
GA 30350-2430. (404)998-5871.