RFC 697

RFC 697: CWD Command of FTP 💖

Author: Jim Lieb, SUMEX-AIM 🎀 NIC number: 32963 ✨ Date: July 14, 1975 🌸 Category, obsoletes and updates: none listed in this document 🦋

Introduction ✨

okay so the Tenex file system supports a "files only" directory 📁 and this kind of directory cannot be "logged in" but it CAN be "connected to" 🔥 a login gives directory "owner" access to the job the system generates, plus an address space where the user can run programs 💅 a connect gives an existing job and its user "owner" access to a directory but creates no address space 🫶 and the words "owner", "group", and "universal" or "public" decide which field of the protection specification gets checked when someone asks to access a file 🔐

Problem 💀

the Tenex FTP server does not allow an FTP Login to a "files only" directory 😭 the current protocol has the CWD (Change Working Directory) command, which gets part of the "connect" functions, but it does NOT grant "owner" access to the user 🙈 so there's literally no way to access a "files only" directory as the "owner" (aka you can supply the password and still not get in as owner) 💔 this is undesirable for private directories of this type because it's uneconomical to define a user-directory "group" for so few directories, and unrestricted "public" access may be undesirable too 🫠

Solution 🧚

there are two approaches we can take ✨ either we remove the distinction "files only" from the FTP login, or we create a command that does the "connect" function 🦋 the restriction on "files only" directories comes from how we define a user of FTP to the server 👑 if we say that any net user who knows the password to a directory has ownership of that directory as far as FTP is concerned, then we have a solution 🎉 if we want an FTP login to be as restrictive as a user login, then we need the second alternative 🔥

Proposal 🌈

change the protocol in one of the following ways:

1. Remove the restriction on "files only" directories for FTP logins or
2. Add an optional argument to the CWD (Change Working Directory) command to specify the password string for the directory. If the password check is successful, the user is granted ownership rights to that directory. If the password is not present or the check fails, the command functions as it presently does and access is controlled by the current protection mechanism. Anonymous users should not be allowed to use this mechanism to change their access to the file system. 🫶 bestie, anon users should not be changing their access this way, periodt 💅

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