Fetch Softworks

Any sftp "Secure ftp" GUI for MacOS? (2 posts)

• Started 23 years ago by billday
• Latest reply 23 years ago from Jim Matthews

• billday Member

  A search on google found a year 2000 hit (below) that seems to imply that version 4 of Fetch will support sftp (Secure ftp) protocol. But sftp is so different from ftp (sftp is really binary-only scp over ssh version 2) that a Macintosh sftp GUI (drag & drop) sftp-client would more likely be a seperate program.

  As sftp software has become readily available for windows and unix boxes in last few months, if a macintosh client would come along, then most unsafe non-annonymous ftp servers could be replaced with sftp servers. Until then the only safe file-transfer methods for macs are the SCP in Nifty-Telnet-SSH or fetch to localhost tunneled thru an ssh client like F-secure (which is somewhat clumsy).

  But no mac sftp client has appeared yet:
  No sftp in the newest (Mar 2001) version 4.0b5 of fetch it appears: nothing in any menus or help about sftp.

  The F-secure folks at datafellows.com sell "F-secure-ssh" software for both Windows and Mac. The Windows version 4 does have a sftp GUI client, but the newest Mac version 2 still does not. And there is not much hope it ever will as
  it is not mentioned in "Features planned for releases after 2.0":
  http://www.f-secure.com/support/ssh/mac/mac-ssh2.shtml
  (In general f-secure website is not very clear or up to date at all.)

  (Below is the year2000 hit about sftp in fetch that is probably incorrect...)
  if is supposed to support "sftp", as suggested at:
  http://www.upenn.edu/computing/group/secure/2000/phase1/matrix.h
  tml#wrq

  Exerpt from above site... "Fetch(4) - Provides the only know(n) sFTP
  client for the Mac. However it is still in beta. Since this is our current
  supported FTP client for the Mac, we would need to evaluate the sFTP side
  and determine whether a recommendation is warranted or a "wait see until the product is out of beta. "

  The sftp-server is avail free for all unix boxes since version 2.3 of openssh in early 2001 See www.openssh.org

  Posted 23 years ago #

• Jim Matthews Administrator

  I'm sure that part of this confusion is about terminology. The term "sftp" predates its use by the authors of SSH2 to describe their file transfer program and its protocol. Its original meaning was more generic, and referred to any scheme for making FTP secure. Fetch's support for Kerberos and GSS security makes it an sftp client under the original definition.

  I have no plans to support the sftp protocol in Fetch, since as you note it has very little in common with FTP. I do plan to support FTP through SSH tunnels in the next release after 4.0.

  Thanks for the information,

  Jim Matthews
  Fetch Softworks

  Posted 23 years ago #