FTP Shell error

[Billy Scherz]

I've got a program that shells out and runs a script in ftp,

ShellLine$ = "ftp -n -s:"+scriptfile$+" "+ftpserver$+" > "+outputfile$
SHELL ShellLine$

When the user enters the wrong password or loses a connection
the program errors out with a 208. What happens is an extra line
is printed, it's not going to the outputfile. I could trap 208
but that seems to me that I'm fixing a symptom instead of the
problem.
TIA

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[Lance Edmonds]

Unfortunately, your description is a little too vague to provide a specific response.

What FTP program are you using? What TCP/IP stack? What O/S? How much memory is available to the FTP program when you SHELL to it? Are you using UltraSHELL to maximize memory to the SHELLed app?

Usually a 208 indicates a memory corruption error - this can happen if the SHELLed process uses memory carelessly (ie, writes over memory it should not do) or is not well constructed to deal with error conditions such as out-of-memory. Ditto for your program: if you do not checked array bounds use, etc, then you could be creating the error yourself somewhere.

Be sure to add $ERROR ALL ON to the top of you PB/DOS code and try again. If all else fails, tell us more about the exact situation (memory usage, etc).

Please let us know how you get on.

Thanks!


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Lance
PowerBASIC Support
mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>

[Billy Scherz]

We're running the program on Win98 and Win98SE, the ftp program and TCP/IP is the standard software included with the O/S.
I'm not sure if this is the memory info your asking for, 584K free in DOS box, all memory values set to Auto in properies window. We are using UltraShell v1.07 with this program.

FTP Script

user someone
password
binary
get filename.zip
quit

I've run this from a command line with this output
c:\>ftp -n -s:script ftpserver.com > output.txt'
Login failed.

c:\>

With valid information nothing is printed between the prompts, the problem appears to be when an error message is generated. I'm parsing the output file for errors so I don't really need to use returned error message.

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[Tom Hanlin]

Assuming the FTP program isn't doing something perverse, like bypassing DOS output altogether... the error information is going to STDERR rather than STDOUT. Unfortunately, Microsoft never did provide the command shell with a way to redirect STDERR. It's possible to redirect STDERR if you know the right tricks but, it's been so many years, I can't recall how.

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Tom Hanlin
PowerBASIC Staff

[Lance Edmonds]

Did you try my suggestion of adding $ERROR ALL ON to the code?

Also, does FTP.EXE return an error code in this condition?

Since you are using Ultrashell, you could try using some of the error recall functions it provides to return the error code that is returned by the SHELLed application. See the Ultrashell documentation for more information.



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Lance
PowerBASIC Support
mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>

[Amos Vryhof]

The FTP.EXE included with Win9x is a Win32 console program.
This means that DOS is most likely not handling the errors.

I hope this helps people in finding an answer to Billy's problem.

Wouldn't it be easier to just write the program using PB/CC if
your going to be using it on Windows machines? There is only
one way to make FTP.EXE run under plain DOS, and I doubt it
would work anyway, since the your Winsock would be gone.



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Amos

[Lance Edmonds]

Console applications absolutely *can* return an ERRORLEVEL value to the calling DOS application, but whether FTP.EXE does this or not is another question.




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Lance
PowerBASIC Support
mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>

[Billy Scherz]

The program has been compiled with $ERROR ALL ON. I've checked the Ultrashell status and it doesn't report an error.


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[Lance Edmonds]

Maybe you need to look for an alternative FTP agent to use with your code... there must be some around that provide a "command-line interface".

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Lance
PowerBASIC Support
mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>

[Amos Vryhof]

Plenty-

DOS Only- http://www.simtel.net/simcgi-bin/dos...queryinput=ftp

Win9x Console- http://www.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/...k/nftp161w.zip

PoweBASIC FTP Client engine- http://www.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/...g/fce4pb20.zip

I think the fce4pb20.zip is for PB/CC, since it was listed under
Win95...then again, it could just be in the wrong place.


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Amos

[Amos Vryhof]

Out of curiosity, I wrote a 4DOS batch file to capture errorlevels
of programs. I tested ftp.exe with a number of different conditions
including the specified one. I forced ftp.exe to fail numerous times
and each time it returned 0, which means it does *not* return an
ERRORLEVEL.


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Amos

[Lance Edmonds]

The "free stuff" that comes with Operating Systems is not always the most useful... caveat emptor...


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Lance
PowerBASIC Support
mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>