Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!ucsd!ucbvax!fermi.CRAY.COM!hrp
From: hrp@fermi.CRAY.COM (Hal Peterson)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: ftp hash marks in binary mode
Message-ID: <8806232023.AA22545@fermi.cray.com>
Date: 23 Jun 88 20:23:39 GMT
References: <23249@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 11

This is a bug in the FTP client in both 4.2BSD and 4.3BSD.  The code
does not allow for the possibility of a read() returning less than a
full buffer, which happens all of the time with a TCP socket,
especially over a busy long-haul net.  You get a hash mark for every
successful read rather than for every BUFSIZ bytes transferred, and
since the size of every read is unpredictable, there is no way to
determine how many bytes you have transferred from the number of hash
marks you have seen.

--
Hal Peterson / Cray Research / 1440 Northland Dr. / Mendota Hts, MN  55120
hrp%hall.CRAY.COM@umn-rei-uc.ARPA	ihnp4!cray!hrp	    (612) 681-3145