Re: How to COPY (not transfer) a file on a remote server

date: Thu, 8 Dec 2011 18:48:10 -0500
from: John Yeung <gallium.arsenide@xxxxxxxxx>
subject: Re: How to COPY (not transfer) a file on a remote server
using FTP

On Thu, Dec 8, 2011 at 6:09 PM, CRPence <CRPbottle@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

? My perception is... The wrong question [i.e. the subject] is being
asked. ?If the file is not ready, then even if the application were
updated to make a copy of the file after its updates were complete,
then the file to be retrieved [by GET] would still not be ready.? ?Is

not the real question to be asked, "What happens when the data is not

available from the server?" ?Is there any significant difference
between "unavailable due to locking" versus "unavailable due to not
existing", as far as the GET requester is concerned?

The Real World is a messy place, and this is absolutely different in

many real-world situations. Worlds apart different. The fact of the
matter is, the locking >application could very well just have been
carelessly written, so that it is really, goodly, honestly, truly done
from a logical/functional standpoint... but simply >never released the
lock.

I'm not saying that this will be the case in every situation. But I

trust the OP to be able to recognize whether or not this is the case.

And yes, absolutely, the best solution would be to find out why the

process is no longer releasing the lock, and get it fixed. But if that
is not possible, or if it will >take a long time, then *in the
meantime*, it would be really nice to at least be able to read the data
that is there.

It could just be the OS screwing up as well. NTFS security isn't the
most robust, and sometimes the 'locked' flag on a file just doesn't get
cleared, no matter what the creating process did or didn't do. There are
utilities available to fix this situation, but they have to be run on
the windows box, wouldn't help from an FTP session. I normally only
experience this situation when a process crashes and fails to clean
itself up, but that isn't always an obvious event on windows of any
flavor.

AFAIK, with FTP, you should see a 450 error if the file is locked, and a
550 if it simply doesn't exist.