You know that ftpcluster is a prototype? Some things are working some things not. Ok, the list of non-working things is longer.

Working things

• FTP protocol
  ftpcluster speaks enough FTP to upload, download, delete and rename files. You can also create, delete and rename directories.

• The cluster is working
  Files can be distributed over your cluster nodes. ftpcluster knows how to handle files on your nodes.

• Replication
  Files can be replicated to two or more node for fail-over situations.

• User authentication
  Version 1.0.3: Users must authenticate against a local password file. Password are actually stored in cleartext.

• Filenames
  Version 1.0.3: Filenames are not limited to a certain set of characters. There's optional support for blanks and/or arbitrary characters in filenames. You can however restrict your users to usual UNIX filename conventions.

• Partial support for FTP REST command
  Version 1.0.7: The cluster supports the REST command for downloads, for uploads only if the file is stored on the cluster.

• System checker
  Since version 1.0.9 there are programs to check and repair cluster nodes.

Non-working things

• Permission control
  The permission control has to be tested and perhaps redone.

• Encrypted password
  The FTP cluster should use encrypted instead of cleartext passwords.

• Race conditions
  There are some race conditions when ftpcluster works on both files, the real local and the link/info file. This may result in lost files. But this situation can be prevented if all files in the cluster tree are owned by the cluster user.

  Other race conditions appear when filemover or replicator recognize a modified info/link file after they have started their operation. Such situations are more likely to appear than the first one but they lead only to orphaned files. This leads us to the next point.

• No PASV mode support
  There is actually no support for passive mode transfers.

• TYPE command
  ftpcluster accepts the TYPE command but handles all transfers binary. Better you tell your FTP client to do also everything as binary.

• REST command
  The cluster server has no full support for the REST command.