What version of efs are you using? You could try the one in Pre-Releases. Latest Installed Package name Vers. Vers. Description =============================================================================== <lines deleted by Adrian> efs 1.25 1.25 Treat files on remote systems the same as local files. Adrian Jeff> When I try to update package index Jeff> (running from 21.1.11 solaris) I get: Jeff> (1) (error/warning) Error in process filter: (ftp-error FTP Error: CWD 550 /pub/xemacs/packages/package-index.LATEST.pgp/: Not a directory. failed: ) Jeff> The problem seems to be that efs insists that the package index file Jeff> is a directory instead of a file, and gets an error when it trys to Jeff> download the index. Jeff> (package-get-locate-index-file nil) ==> Jeff> "/anonymous＠ftp.sunsite.utk.edu:pub/xemacs/packages/package-index.LATEST.pgp" Jeff> -jeff -- Adrian Aichner mailto:adrian＠xemacs.org http://www.xemacs.org/

Jeff> The problem seems to be that efs insists that the package Jeff> index file is a directory instead of a file, and gets an Jeff> error when it trys to download the index. As Adrian says, you may be using an out-of-date EFS. For future reference, EFS is a program that tries to be fool-proof, and the fools always stay ahead of it. It turns out that there are a number of (now older) ftpds that do not give reliable indications about file status. A failed CWD seems to be the most reliable way of finding out that an object is not a directory. OTOH, on some platforms fetching a directory leads to disaster (it tars up the whole directory and sends it to you). So EFS always tries a CWD to an object. On the newer versions of EFS (in particular efs-1.25-pkg, in pretest), you need to watch out for "smart" ftp clients that try various things (in particular passive access) automatically, and return messages that EFS doesn't recognize and takes as fatal errors. Two that I know you need to watch for are PORT and Entering Passive Mode. Mike> I did some debugging tonight and it appears that this Mike> problem is being caused by "200 PORT command successful" Mike> messages coming from the cygwin FTP client after the get Mike> command is issued. EFS was thinking that this response Mike> meant the get command was done when in fact it had only just Mike> started. I fixed it by adding this to my custom.el file: '(efs-skip-msgs-alist (quote (("" . "^110 \\|^125 \\|^150 ") ("^ls \\|^put \\|^get \\|^append \\|passive" . "^500 EPSV not understood") ("^ls \\|^put \\|^get \\|^append " . "^227 Entering Passive Mode") ("^ls \\|^put \\|^get \\|^append " . "^200 PORT command successful"))) t) Alternatively in your init file: (setq efs-skip-msgs-alist (quote (("" . "^110 \\|^125 \\|^150 ") ("^ls \\|^put \\|^get \\|^append \\|passive" . "^500 EPSV not understood") ("^ls \\|^put \\|^get \\|^append " . "^227 Entering Passive Mode") ("^ls \\|^put \\|^get \\|^append " . "^200 PORT command successful")))) (Actually, I recommend not doing this automatically, but that's up to you.) -- University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091 _________________ _________________ _________________ _________________ What are those straight lines for? "XEmacs rules."