Bug in curl makes Fedora ftp:// URL installations fail with some mirrors

[Pasi Kärkkäinen]

On Sun, Oct 17, 2010 at 09:29:48AM +0100, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 11:49:39PM +0300, Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:
> > You can reproduce the bug like this:
> > curl -o iputils-20071127-10.fc13.x86_64.rpm --range 1384-1400 ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/mirrors/fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/13/Fedora/x86_64/os/Packages/iputils-20071127-10.fc13.x86_64.rpm
> > 
> > It gives error "(28) FTP response timeout" after around one minute.
> > (1384 is the size of the header in many rpms).
> 
> That command worked fine for me, with curl-7.21.0-5.fc14.x86_64, but I
> realized that it worked because I was using a proxy.  So I would
> suggest people do:
> 
>   unset ftp_proxy
> 
> before running the test.  The command fails in the way you described
> without a proxy.
> 
> I looked at the trace (curl -v) and it looks like the FTP server
> itself is not responding correctly.  The problem does not seem to be
> the REST command, but the short RETR: curl only downloads 17 bytes
> then closes the connection, but this appears to confuse the FTP
> server.  The FTP server appears to die when this happens, whereas I
> think I would expect it to send an error message on the control
> connection.
> 

Yes, indeed, it seems more likely a bug in the FTP server (pure-ftpd),
but it would be very nice to have a workaround in curl or in anaconda for
it..

I'm sure ftp.funet.fi is not the only Fedora mirror running pure-ftpd.

-- Pasi