Improving sftp (was Re: BUG: scp -r follows symlinks)

[Gregory Seidman]

On Tue, Jan 06, 2004 at 06:30:16PM +0100, Markus Friedl wrote:
[...]
} as has been noted 100 times before:
} 
} this would break scp.
} 
} adding this to sftp would be fine.

I consider the main problem with sftp to be its frontend. What I'd
really like to see is a way to use any old FTP client (I'm fond of
ncftp) to transfer files over an ssh connection. One idea is to do the
same sort of thing that the -D flag to ssh does. Consider the -t and -T
flags (for transfer since both -f and -F are taken):

ssh -f -N -t 2121 -T 2100 remotehost

This listens on port 2100 on the remote host and port 2121 on the local
host for incoming FTP connections. The server should allow any username
and password (well, that's up for debate) and simply behave as an FTP
server. I don't remember the FTP protocol that well, but it may be
necessary to open a second port on each side and either require or deny
passive FTP; someone who has read up on it more recently than I have can
comment.

Any thoughts/comments?

--Greg