Re: tls-ftp and GConf

[Andy Hanton <andyhanton comcast net>]

On Wed, 2003-09-10 at 04:11, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> These look like good ideas, however gnome-vfs modules just can't have a
> UI, since the gnome-vfs library is conceptually at a lower level than
> gtk+, and might even be used by console applications. We can't even rely
> on a running glib mainloop in the gnome-vfs backends.

I understand that it can't directly have a UI, but a gnome-vfs method
could have a matching plugin for the authentication dialog that could
implement a UI.  From the user's perspective it wouldn't make any
difference.  

> 
> However, nobody is expected to enter password and username in the URL.
> What happens is that the module that needs to do authentication does a
> callback to the app and lets the app display the UI. Then if the app
> uses libgnomeui, it can just call gnome_authentication_manager_init() to
> install the default gnome handlers for the standard callbacks. 
> 
> At the moment the standard status messages in
> gnome-vfs-standard-callbacks.h are mostly http related, but one could
> easily add ones that were ftp specific. 

Ooops.  I forgot that this was fixed in 2.4.  I had read over the code
in nautilus 2.2 which did implement it's own dialog.  

> At the moment all gnome-vfs password dialogs use
> GnomeVFSModuleCallbackAuthenticationIn, which is very http-based. If you
> pass AuthTypeBasic instead of AuthTypeDigest the default password dialog
> will indeed warn you that the password is sent in plaintext.

That is good to hear.  Do you know when the authentication callback
patch for ftp will be finished off?  It seems the changes required are
fairly simple and it has been sitting for three months with no status
update.  Should I finish it off if I get time?  

I have added a timeout to gnome_vfs_inet_connection_create and used that
to fall back to plain ftp.  I attached the new patches to bug 121713.  I
tested it with a simple iptables firewall and it works.  I would like to
make sure that the user is prompted for their password again when it
falls back to regular ftp, but I can't do that until we have the
authentication callback.  

I noticed that even though the connection returns an error after 75
seconds, the nautilus spinner keeps going.  I looked over the code, but
I didn't find where the error handling is.  It just needs to stop the
spinner if it gets a GNOME_VFS_ERROR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT result.  

-- 
Andy Hanton <andyhanton comcast net>