[Zope] Success! (was: efs fails to connect to any hosts)

[Skip Montanaro]

About a week ago I complained to both the Zope and XEmacs beta mailing lists
that I couldn't connect to remote hosts using efs from my Mac Powerbook
running 10.2.1 and XEmacs 21.5.b9.  Specifically, I wanted to connect to
Zope's FTP server.  I couldn't even get the server to detect a connection.

I ignored the problem for several days then revisited it today.  It turns
out my efs-ftp-program-args were set incorrectly.  The default value for
this variable is

    '("-i" "-n" "-g" "-v")

As a carryover from my previous Linux laptop, I had set it to

    '("-i" "-u" "-g" "-v")

in my init.el file.  I no longer recall why I needed "-u" but not "-n" under
Linux, but "-u" at least it means something entirely different under MacOSX.

I now have this setting in my init.el file:

    (setq efs-ftp-program-args '("-i" "-g" "-v" "-e" "-n" "-A"))

Both the -e (disable command line editing) and -A (force active mode) seem
to be required for the version of ftp on my machine.  Without -e it can't
detect the remote host type if I connect to ftp.xemacs.org.  Without -A it
attempts to send an EPRT command, which many (most?) ftp servers appear not
to understand.  (Perhaps efs can be trained to ignore EPRT and EPSV errors.)

To the XEmacs beta folks, let me know if you want more input regarding the
-e and -A flags.  I'd be happy to send some ftp buffer contents your way.

-- 
Skip Montanaro - skip@pobox.com
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/