Pliant FTP server

There are two weak parts in the FTP protocol:

the directories content listing format is not well defined
As a result, you can choose either to use a Pliant oriented format, or mimic the crappy Unix directories listing format.
I decided to defaultly use the Unix crappy format because it's the only way I know to get transparent access to the FTP server from Netscape browser.
Datas are passed on a second TCP connection, and this is a big problem when firewalling or masquerading.

The Pliant FTP server does not understand special characters such as '*' and '?' in the 'LIST' or 'NLST' command.

It's basically the same as with the HTTP server:
The simplest way to start Pliant FTP server is to type in the following command at the shell prompt:

pliant module /pliant/protocol/ftp/server.pli command ftp_server

If everything works fine, you should get a message:
FTP server is running on TCP port 21.
and the program should not stop.
If the program stoped (you get back to the prompt), you probably have another FTP server already running, or your TCP/IP layer is not configured properly at operating system level. On a Unix system, you may also not be able to start the FTP server if you don't have 'root' rights.

Now, these are all options you may select when starting the FTP server:
pliant module /pliant/protocol/ftp/server.pli command 'ftp_server name a_string port a_string unix_style a_boolean send_software_release_number a_boolean '

If you want to run both the HTTP and FTP server, you can try somethink like:

pliant module /pliant/protocol/ftp/server.pli command 'ftp_server detached' module /pliant/protocol/http/server.pli command 'http_server secured'

See the security mechanism in HTTP server documentation.

server.pli

contains all the FTP server implementation.

The current status of the FTP server is described in the FTP server section of the Pliant overall project.