[gopher] Re: Uploading

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org>]

On Tue, Oct 08, 2002 at 11:14:33PM -0500, Timm Murray wrote:

> Are there any current standards for uploading via Gopher?  I'm working on a 

None.  Some thoughts:

 * We do have protocols for Gopher authentication, though I do not know
   if they're secure.  UMN gopherd builds without them for now because
   there are security holes in UMN gopherd's implementation.

 * We do have SSL.

 * One could slightly modify the Gopher protocol for uploads.  Have the
   client send a selector string as usual [1], and then have the client
   transmit the remainder of the document.  The server could do
   authentication based on SSL -- the connection could be wrapped in SSL.

 * Your ASK proposal sounds interesting too.

[1] There'd have to be some new token to signify a pending upload

While we're at it, it would be nice to specify a transport protocol for
Gopher menu files.  It would not necessarily be what any Gopher server uses
on-disk, but would permit a standard way for clients to upload those.  The
server could then be free to store it as it sees fit.

> module doesn't support password authentication.  Gopher upload would make 
> everything integrate nicely.

I personally use rsync or scp.

-- John