tnftpd, lukemftpd and conversions

[Daniel Feenberg]

I am trying to get tnftpd or lukemftpd to do the authomatic conversions
documented in the man page. I am running 7.1 Release #0. My 
/var/ftp/etc/ftpd.conf file is only two lines:

    motd all motd
    conversion all .Z f . /bin/compress %s

and from the motd message I can see that the server is using this 
configuration file. The compress program has been copied to 
/var/ftp/bin/compress so it should be available too.

However, while I can ftp to localhost and login as anonymous and get the 
file "test", when I ask for "test.Z" I get only the following messages:

   get test.Z
   local test.Z remote test.Z
   229 entering Passive mode
   550 test.Z: no such file or directory

The man page for ftpd.conf says:

  > If a file to retrieve ends in suffix and a real file (sans suffix)
  > exists then the output of command is returned instead of the
  > contents of the file.

I also tried the default ftpd, with the same result (although it isn't 
clear if ftpd supports conversion, there isn't any documentation for the 
configuration file for ftpd - the included man page is clearly for 
lukemftpd and the tnftpd page is essentially the same).

So I am left with the conclusion that there is something wrong with my
ftpd.conf entry, but have found no examples anywhere on the net to guide
me. There is supposed to be an example in /usr/share/examples/ but it
isn't there (PR 133468). I'd sure like to see it, if anyone has it
or another.

Daniel Feenberg
NBER
617-588-0343
feenberg at nber.org