[ On , January 16, 1999 at 10:57:42 (GMT), Allen Ashley wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: How do I sz/rz under an ssh connection?
>
> I often have a large number of files to transfer and scp is a pain. It
> is likely cumbersome when I am connected and have only one tiny file to send.
> YMMV
I can't think of anything more painful than trying to run zmodem through
an already secure and reliable connection that can even do compression,
no matter how many files you have to transfer or how many times you have
to re-write similar scripts to do multi-file transfers.
Of course without knowing what platform(s) you're using I can't say for
sure why something like "scp * remote.host:" doesn't work for you, or
how hard it might be to write a script to do multi-file transfers
(though so long as your text editor can repeat repetetive operations
automatically it shouldn't even be that difficult to write MS-DOS batch
files to do this). Things like rdist or track over SSH might be even
more useful to you and others trying to transfer many files over SSH
connections.
I suspect that your real complaint is that your current configuration
requires you to type your password for every file to be copied or some
such. You should be able to avoid that with the "scp * remote:" style
of command-line, but you should also be able to set up your
authentication such that you don't ever have to enter a password.
Perhaps people such as yourself are also stuck on the wrong
communications model. Remember, you're not *just* using a modem any
more if you're using SSH -- you're using a TCP/IP network. You can do
many things in many directions over the same "network" (i.e. over your
modem, if you're using a modem in this case) -- you don't have to
restrict yourself to doing things the old-fashioned monotonous way you
might have had to when you used a simple direct modem connection with no
networking protocols to assist you. In fact you can have many SSH
connections open simultaneously, and each connecton might have one or
more TCP/IP connections tunneled through it, and of course you can be
using other TCP/IP services simultaneously with all this SSH stuff, and
one or all of these connections might be to separate remote hosts (all
of this of course depending on the capabilities of the operating systems
you're using on each system involved).
(One of the problems with computer security is that if you make it too
difficult to use, people will work around it or even stop using the
computer. I'm not trying to suggest that you're avoiding the security
of SSH in any way by using zmodem with it -- I'm only trying to say that
SSH should allow your life to be simpler because it isn't one of those
security tools that was designed to be hard to use.)
Lastly I should point out that unless you're very careful any file
transfer protocol that doesn't explicly use SSH or that you've not been
very careful to tunnel through SSH, could easily send data in the
clear. SSH by itself doesn't guarantee that everything sent from one
computer to another is going through SSH. Using scp explicitly ensures
that your files are transfered through an SSH connection.
--
Greg A. Woods
+1 416 218-0098 VE3TCP <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Secrets of the Weird <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
