Delimiter used in FTP virtual usernames is invalid as per W3C spec

[halr9000]

I just created a bugzilla for this, but I thought it'd make sense to raise this in the forum in case anyone else has run across it. What do you guys think? How responsive is cPanel to bugs usually?

http://bugzilla.cpanel.net/show_bug.cgi?id=2209

cPanel creates virtual FTP user accounts in the form [email protected]. When
encoding this a URI, this is what you get:

[email protected]@vhost.com

I'm starting to have issues because many of the programs I'm using expect URIs
to be built as per the W3C spec as listed here:

http://www.w3.org/Addressing/URL/uri-spec.html

The only legal characters in the username portion according to this spec are:

A-Za-z0-9 and the characters "- _ . +"

The presence of the extra @ sign makes FTP virtually (no pun intended) useless
to me. Please fix asap. It would make sense to use + like you do with pop3.

 

[chirpy]

It ought to be possible with proftpd, but don't know how easy it would be with pure-ftpd. It would probably mean duplicating all the account information to add another account format.

It depends whether the amount of work is worth it compared to the actual need. Since you can no longer use that format in IE, it makes it a moot point for the average 95%+ of users.

Another consideration, is that so long as it's meeting the ftp RFC requirements, then they are meeting their obligation. Using FTP in browsers is after all a pretty nasty cludge.

 

[halr9000]

Another consideration, is that so long as it's meeting the ftp RFC requirements, then they are meeting their obligation. Using FTP in browsers is after all a pretty nasty cludge.

Well, while browsers make crappy ftp clients, the ftp-url scheme is just as old as the http one. It was included in the beginning, see rfc1738, circie 1994. I just tried wading through rfc959 (ftp) but it's REALLY dry and I got bored. I'm not certain that it mentions what qualifies as a username, though. But we know what is *not* allowed in a uri-spec.

But anyway, who said I was using a browser? I'm actually trying to host an open-source software project's code repository. I was going to install Subversion on my box, but its apache module requires apache2. Then I found arch which doesn't require any server-side stuff at all, just an ftp server. But, you guessed it, it uses the FTP URI spec on its command-line.

http://subversion.tigris.org/
http://www.gnu.org/software/gnu-arch/

I'm open to any tips on hosting an RCS package on cpanel, but I still feel this is a bug.