How to Set IIS 4.0 FTP Files to All Lowercase (231876)

We strongly recommend that all users upgrade to Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) version 6.0 running on Microsoft Windows Server 2003. IIS 6.0 significantly increases Web infrastructure security. For more information about IIS security-related topics, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/prodtech/IIS.mspx

SUMMARY

The FTP Service running under IIS 4.0 treats case sensitivity on file names based on the case that was used when the files were transferred.

Per RFC 959, FTP Commands are not case sensitive, yet there is no reference to file names. Commands such as LS and MDELE look at the case of the file name on the server when returning results, for example:

ftp> dir
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls.
-rwxrwxrwx 1 owner group 309 May 6 17:38 make.wav
-rwxrwxrwx 1 owner group 5025 May 6 18:20 make1.wav
-rwxrwxrwx 1 owner group 309 May 4 15:17 MAKEFILE.WAV
226 Transfer complete.
212 bytes received in 0.03 seconds (6.63 Kbytes/sec)

ftp> ls *.wav
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for file list.
make.wav
make1.wav
226 Transfer complete.
21 bytes received in 0.00 seconds (21000.00 Kbytes/sec)

ftp> ls *.WAV
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for file list.
MAKEFILE.WAV
226 Transfer complete.
14 bytes received in 0.00 seconds (14000.00 Kbytes/sec)

MORE INFORMATION

A registry key is now available that can be added to FTP to treat all file names on an IIS 4.0 FTP server as lowercase.

When you add the following registry entry, all files will be treated as lowercase when you perform any FTP command:

HKLM/System/CurrentControlSet/Services/MSFTPSVC/Parameters/

LowercaseFiles: REG_DWORD:1
(Default is 0)

Stopping and restarting the FTP service is required for the change take effect.

After the registry is modified, the above commands will output changes as follows:

ftp> dir
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls.
-rwxrwxrwx 1 owner group 309 May 6 17:38 make.wav
-rwxrwxrwx 1 owner group 5025 May 6 18:20 make1.wav
-rwxrwxrwx 1 owner group 309 May 4 15:17 makefile.wav
226 Transfer complete.
212 bytes received in 0.03 seconds (6.63 Kbytes/sec)

ftp> ls *.wav
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for file list.
make.wav
make1.wav
makefile.wav
226 Transfer complete.
35 bytes received in 0.00 seconds (21000.00 Kbytes/sec)

ftp> ls *.WAV
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for file list.
make.wav
make1.wav
makefile.wav
226 Transfer complete.
35 bytes received in 0.00 seconds (14000.00 Kbytes/sec)

Note: This parameter is only available when Windows NT 4.0 SP4 is applied. Previous to this version, the lowercase parameter is not available.