[CentOS] Two ftp clients? Why?

[Robert Heller]

At Tue, 2 Aug 2011 15:41:52 -0400 (EDT) CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote:

> 
> I had a problem wherein running a script with an embedded ftp call
> would work in the login shell during integration testing and then
> fail with an unrecognized option error in cron during acceptance
> testing.
> 
> In solving this I discovered that RedHat, and therefore CentOS,
> ships with at least two ftp clients, /usr/bin/ftp ( which I thought
> I was using ) and /usr/kerberos/bin/ftp, which I actually was using.
>  even though I had no inkling of its existence.
> 
> My question is why?  Why are there two ftp clients provided in a
> single distribution and why is the kerberos version effectively made
> the default whereas one might reasonably assume that anything in
> /usr/bin/ is the standard ( and by inference default ) ftp client
> for the distribution?  If kerberos ftp is intended to be the default
> ftp client then why is it not in, or at least linked to from,
> /usr/bin?
> 
> I just do not understand why these obscure distribution 'gotchas'
> are created in the first place, much less permitted to persist.

Does this give you a clue:

gollum.deepsoft.com% rpm -qf /usr/kerberos/bin/ftp /usr/bin/ftp
krb5-workstation-1.6.1-55.el5_6.2
ftp-0.17-35.el5


> 

-- 
Robert Heller             -- 978-544-6933 / heller at deepsoft.com
Deepwoods Software        -- http://www.deepsoft.com/
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