Bug 1387

Summary:	Support for tunneling FTP
Product:	Portable OpenSSH	Reporter:	Andreas Schildbach <mindrot.org>
Component:	ssh	Assignee:	Assigned to nobody <unassigned-bugs>
Status:	CLOSED WONTFIX
Severity:	enhancement	CC:	dtucker
Priority:	P2
Version:	4.7p1
Hardware:	All
OS:	All

Description Andreas Schildbach 2007-11-04 09:17:43 AEDT

It would be great if OpenSSH would come with special support for tunneling FTP transfers (both control and data channels), somewhat similar to Linux Netfilter.

FTP still plays an important role, despite being deprecated by SFTP and SCP. There are still servers (behind firewalls) that can only do FTP. Also, having a tunnel for FTP would allow the tunnel to end on a machine different from the gateway, while typical SFTP and SCP connections can only access files local to the gateway.

It should be noted that there are a lot of "howto tunnel ftp via ssh" documents floating around that leave their readers in the false assumption that their connection would be encrypted (only the control channel is). Such as:

http://www.ftpgetter.com/de/ftp-ssh-tunnel.php

Comment 1 Darren Tucker 2007-11-04 10:20:27 AEDT

FTP is an ugly protocol, I don't know that ssh (BTW, the the magic would need to be in the client not the server)

(In reply to comment #0)
> It would be great if OpenSSH would come with special support for
> tunneling FTP transfers (both control and data channels), somewhat
> similar to Linux Netfilter.

FTP is an ugly protocol and I don't think ssh should have special-case code for it.  (BTW, the the magic would need to be in the client not the server for the common case).

If your client supports SOCKS, and both client and server support FTP passive mode, you can already tunnel FTP with DynamicForward.

[...]
> It should be noted that there are a lot of "howto tunnel ftp via ssh"
> documents floating around that leave their readers in the false
> assumption that their connection would be encrypted (only the control
> channel is). Such as:
> 
> http://www.ftpgetter.com/de/ftp-ssh-tunnel.php

Incorrect information out on the internet is somewhat out of our control...

Comment 2 Darren Tucker 2010-01-13 11:59:20 AEDT

Thanks for the suggestion but we're not going to do this.

Comment 3 Damien Miller 2010-04-16 15:50:39 AEST

Mass move of bugs RESOLVED->CLOSED following the release of openssh-5.5p1