I was recently posed with a question from a customer about FTP. The issue was that when they downloaded from a remote server the resulting data in the file on the 3000 only had one long line. Now when some people encounter this, one of the things they try to do is add an LF or change a line ending in LF to have a CRLF to the end of each line.
If you're considering doing this, don't, stop. Save yourself a lot of trouble and read on, because in my experience this never works.
So the specific situation was that a customer has a file from a third party that they downloaded to an NT server from a Unix server. When they downloaded from the NT server in this manner as they were told the file was fixed ascii 532 bytes:
get remotefile test;rec=-532,1,f,ascii;disc=100000When they tried to process the file they found to have only one record and this was regardles of using ASCII or BINARY transfer methods.
ACCOUNT= GREEN GROUP= NEIL
FILENAME CODE ------------LOGICAL RECORD----------- ----SPACE----
SIZE TYP EOF LIMIT R/B SECTORS #X MX
TEST 532B FA 1 100000 1 16 1 8
So the solution in this case is to do the following:
open servername bytestream get remotefile testbyte;REC=,,B;DISC=16384000This results in a file that would like similar to this:
ACCOUNT= GREEN GROUP= NEIL
FILENAME CODE ------------LOGICAL RECORD----------- ----SPACE----
SIZE TYP EOF LIMIT R/B SECTORS #X MX
TESTBYTE 1B BA 280079 16384000 1 1104 4 32
From there you can make the file fixed length with a specific size with
either Qedit or the FROMBYTE utility.
t TESTBYTE set keep var off set len 532 k newfile,unnThe file will now look like this:
ACCOUNT= GREEN GROUP= NEIL
FILENAME CODE ------------LOGICAL RECORD----------- ----SPACE----
SIZE TYP EOF LIMIT R/B SECTORS #X MX
NEWFILE 532B FA 751 10000 1 1568 4 8
There are other methods, such as Reflection File transfer for PC to 3000, which is popular in the 3000 world, but almost non-existent in the HP 9000 arena. There is Kermit; however, this is more prevalent in the 9000 world and frankly I've never really gotten it to work very successfully.
Besides, our development environment includes MPE, HP-UX, and Windows and FTP come for free on all boxes and can be used in batch.
FTP on the MPE platform is very similar to FTP on HP-UX, Linux or Windows but with some interesting MPE'isms. The first is the exitonerror command, which I use in all FTP transfers. It simply means that the FTP script will immediately stop upon any error. Since we do most transfers in batch we know if/when a transfer has failed, as the ftp program aborts with the error number in a variable called ftplasterr.
Below is a typical ftp batch transfer that we use in production. In this case it gets the self-extracting version of the Suprtool Winhelp Installation from our NTDEV server. Note that we echo the commands out to a temporary file and then just run the ftp program with the stdin equated to that file.
We also refer to our machines by variables, this way if we ever need to move a machine we just change the value of the global variable and the files will be picked up from that new machine.
!comment !comment Get self-extracting Zip file from server and !comment put onto dev. !comment ! !file ftptemp;temp !purge suprhelp.whelpnew ! !echo exitonerror >> ftptemp !echo user username password >> ftptemp !echo binary >> ftptemp !echo cd /d/robdev/winhelp/ >> ftptemp !echo get suprhelp.exe suprhelp.whelpnew >> ftptemp !echo quit >> ftptemp ! !setvar ftplasterr 0 !run ftp.arpa.sys;info="!NTDEV";stdin=*ftptemp !if ftplasterr <> 0 then ! showvar ftp@ ! setjcw jcw fatal !endif !purge ftptemp,temp !
You may also notice that we check the ftplasterr variable and show all of the values for the other variables.
Finally you may have noticed the cd /d/ command in the ftp portion of the script, the /d/ stands for the drive letter on the NT server which has multiple drives.
;rec=-80,1,f,ascii
MPE now magically keeps track of that for you and has done since a MPE 6.0.
When transferring a file to an MPE system from a non-MPE system or transferring through a non-MPE system you will need to specify the file attributes on the target MPE system as in:
put mympefile myfile;rec=-80,1,f,ascii;disc=3000
The default file attributes can be specified for a file transferred to your MPE system by changing the corresponding line in the file BLDPARMS.ARPA.SYS which is shown below:
;REC=-80,,F,ASCII;DISC=204800 ;REC=-256,,V,BINARY;DISC=204800 ;REC=,,B;DISC=16384000Note: only the first three lines are read; everything after them is ignored.
You may modify the first three lines as long as you keep the same syntax. I.e., you may change the numbers, or F to V, but don't add anything bizarre. Anything after a space is ignored, so don't insert any spaces. If the file is missing (or any line in it), the old hard-coded defaults will be used as a back up. These are:
;REC=-80,,F,ASCII;DISC=204800 for ASCII mode, ;REC=-256,,V,BINARY;DISC=204800 for binary mode. ;REC=,,B;DISC=16384000 for byte stream mode.
Also, if either the REC= part or the DISC= part of either line has bad syntax, the default for that part will be reverted to.
Users may make local copies of this file and set their own defaults via a file equation:
:file bldparms.arpa.sys=myfile
ftp> :listf ,2You can find out what commands you can do remotely with the remotehelp command:
ftp> remotehelp 214-HP ARPA FTP SERVER recognizes the following commands (* - unimplemented): USER PORT STOR MSAM* RNTO NLST MKD CDUP PASS PASV* APPE MRSQ* ABOR* SITE XMKD XCUP ACCT* TYPE MLFL* MRCP* DELE SYST RMD STOU SMNT* STRU MAIL* ALLO* CWD STAT XRMD SIZE REIN* MODE MSND* REST* XCWD HELP PWD MDTM QUIT RETR MSOM* RNFR LIST NOOP XPWD 214 Refer to FTPDOC.ARPA.SYS for more FTP Server information.
Typically I just stream jobs on the remote system with FTP's site command by doing the following in the FTP client:
ftp> site stream robelle.job.robelle 200 STREAM command ok.
Site is a standard FTP command, but what host commands the FTP server at the other end supports varies from server to server.
In fact the Qedit for Window Server installation has it's own FTP client which ftp's the server and streams the "robelle" job to set the attributes of the Robelle account.
put myfile mympefileThe file will go to the group you are currently logged into.
If you want to put files into the HFS namespace then you can just specify using the typical POSIX notation:
put myfile /MYACCOUNT/MYGROUP/mydirectory/myhfsfile
For more information on the ins and outs of FTP you can read the latest ftp documentation at:
http://docs.hp.com/mpeix/pdf/36957-90159.pdf
When considering FTP, there are 3 areas that can be secured: login (user authentication), the command channel (where you transmit the PUT and GET commands, etc.) and the data channel (where you transfer the files).
For example, here is a free client for secure ftp that uses SSL (it requires Java 2 version 1.3 on your machine):
http://www.glub.com/products/secureftp/HP-UX has secure FTP login via the optional "Secure Internet Services", but I could not find clear documentation about secure command and data channels.
MPE/iX does not have secure FTP. Perhaps someone could configure a wrapper, such as the GLUB Secure FTP Wrapper (again requires Java 2, v 1.3):
http://www.glub.com/products/ftpswrap/
Starting with MPE/iX 6.0, it has been very easy to enable the ftp server on your HP e3000. Once enabled, the ftp server makes it easy for you to deliver output to your PCs, NT servers, UNIX boxes, even to servers across the world.
Here are the installation steps on MPE/iX:
:STREAM FTPCNFJ.ARPA.SYS
:STREAM JINETD.NET.SYSThis second job needs to be always running for the ftp server to be enabled. So if you want to stop access to your ftp server then simply abort this job.
Security concerns: If your HP e3000 is on a network that is connected to the internet, then you've just opened it up to whole world. Make sure your accounts are password protected. If you rely on 3rd party products like VeSoft's Security/3000 then you may need current versions that support the MPE/iX 6.0 INETD approach. You may also need the BACKG job running with 'HELLO' executing and you may need to add a "$CONFIG FTP ..." line to your HELLO.DATA.VESOFT file. Check with your 3rd party vendor.
I ran into a problem accessing our HP3000 with ftp. It kept on rejecting the connection request. More specifically, it was rejecting the login information.
c:\>ftp my3000 Connected to my3000.robelle.com. 220 HP ARPA FTP Server [A0011001] (C) Hewlett-Packard Co. 1990 User (my3000.robelle.com:(none)): francois/longpassword,user.account 530 User log on unsuccessful Login failed.
I was able to connect using other protocols like telnet and NS/VT. After a number of tries monitoring the logon process, I realized that something was wrong with my password.
We use the session password feature of VESoft's Security/3000. One of the clues was in Security/3000's logfile. Whenever I entered an invalid password, I could see:
FTP :HELLO FRANCOIS,USER.ACCOUNT : BAD PASSWORD 13:44/142/AIF:PE CHLOGON: Refused chlogon FRANCOIS,USER.ACCOUNT: BAD PASSWORD
Whenever I entered my password, the login request was rejected, but nothing was logged. The request was apparently not getting to Security/3000. I changed my password to a temporary 3-character password and was able to use ftp. The logfile then showed:
FTP :HELLO FRANCOIS,USER.ACCOUNT : OK 13:46/142/AIF:PE CHLOGON: Allowed chlogon FRANCOIS,USER.ACCOUNT: CHECK ok
As I tried to set my password back to its original value, I realized that it had 9 characters. I set it to the first 8 characters and everything worked from that point.
Login requests have to go through the ftp server and MPE's AIF:PE before getting to Security/3000. I suspect that either ftp server or AIF:PE truncates the password to 8 characters before passing it to Security/3000.
We didn't have any password edit mask in Security/3000. I was not able to find the default maximum length but, just for fun, I have been able to enter an 80-character password. So, how do you define a password maximum length?
Enter a $VEPASS-FORBID directive similar to this one in the securcon file:
$VEPASS-FORBID "len(p)>8" "Password must have 1-8 characters" francois,@.@
The first string is the condition that you want to check. "LEN" is a Security/3000 function which returns the length of the variable enclosed in parentheses. "p" is the internal variable name for the password itself. The second string is a message to be displayed if the condition is true. The last piece of information is optional. If not specified, the condition is checked for all users. In the example above, it is only checked when the session name is "francois". As with all VESoft software, $VEPASS-FORBID directives are flexible and can do almost anything you need.