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How do FTP servers handle rename to an existing file?

How do FTP servers handle rename to an existing file?

How do FTP servers normaly handle rename to a file that aready exist? That is, will the existing to-file be overwritten or will I get an error? Is there some specification about how FTP servers should handle this, or is it OS or implementation dependent?

Asked by: Guest | Views: 281
Total answers/comments: 1
bert [Entry]

"After setting up quite a few FTP servers in my time I can say this is server specific. Some FTP servers have a feature where they will not send back a 550 error, but instead rename your upload to file.1, file.2, and so on. This is quite handy to preserve originals in case of accidental overwrite.

The FTP server I prefer to work with is Pure-FTPd. It has this feature with the -r switch:

- '-r': Never overwrite existing files. Uploading a file whoose name
already exists cause an automatic rename. Files are called xyz, xyz.1, xyz.2,
xyz.3, etc."