Stupid file manager question...

[Unregistered]

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[Matt]

I'd suggest you double check the directory permissions. Each directory in the path should have the permission 750 at the least and your files should have 640 at the minimum (of course the Web server can't read them then).

Do you want to allow users to be able to read the files and not upload? If so, you could just list directory contents through the Web server (http://apisnetworks.com/resources.php?cid=8&id=12).

Alternatively, if you want to let users upload files, you could either create individual user accounts through the control panel ("Add User" link). If you don't want to give them a physical account on your hosting account, you can use a Web-based file manager like Celerondude's Uploader (http://celerondude.com/script_uploaderv6).

[bobservo]

Here's what the file manager screen looks like, even with these settings it's still asking people for passwords when they try to access the FTP:

http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/5998/examplefn5.jpg

That is the directory beneath "Home." The folder I want to share is below the "bobservo" directory and has the same access settings.

[Matt]

It needs the execute bit set for group. See this post (http://forums.apisnetworks.com/showpost.php?p=232&postcount=14) about permissions on directories.

[bobservo]

Thanks! I'll try this out.

EDIT: Checked off execute and it didn't seem to work... I'm trying to give access to the directories in the bobservo folder, like ftp://gauss.apisnetworks.com/../bobservo/music. Still, when i give people the link to this directory(or any of the files) it asks them for a password.

[Matt]

You're not using IE, right? IE doesn't handle FTP even remotely well. If it keeps prompting the user for the login and password, then the login and password entered are incorrect. The login should be <user>@<domain> and not just <user>. If you are certain that the <user>@<domain> login is correct, then switch @ out with #.

[bobservo]

You're not using IE, right? IE doesn't handle FTP even remotely well. If it keeps prompting the user for the login and password, then the login and password entered are incorrect. The login should be <user>@<domain> and not just <user>. If you are certain that the <user>@<domain> login is correct, then switch @ out with #.

Nope, Firefox. But what I'm mainly concerned with is if other people can access files on my FTP without worrying about usernames or passwords. I just want to be able to link directly to files stored in my FTP straight from my blog. My actual webspace is on LiveJournal, and I want to use the FTP for file storage(as LiveJournal doesn't have any). I wasn't expecting it to be this difficult, and I really don't think it should be. I'm sure there is a simple solution to this, because what I'm trying to do seems to be very common(at least to me).

[Matt]

Just make a directory somewhere under /var/www/html/ and create a file named .htaccess with the following line in there to turn on directory listings:
Options +Indexes

With this method, users can download and view files, but cannot upload. This is a safer and much easier solution for file storage than FTP. Plus with FTP, if a user is trying to access it using Internet Explorer, then they will run into a lot of complications. Of course you would link to the file by passing out the URL http://<your domain>/<directory created under /var/www/html/>/<some filename>.

They'll need a username/password to access it via FTP.

[bobservo]

Thanks a lot for your help. Just one more question about the file I have to create: should this be a simple .txt file?

[Matt]

It should be a text file named ".htaccess". If you're making it in Windows, it probably will complain about the name. In that case, name it "htaccess.txt", then upload to the FTP server and rename it to ".htaccess". After renaming it, it may vanish from your FTP client, in which case see this resource center article (http://apisnetworks.com/resources.php?cid=12&id=2) about showing hidden files.

[bobservo]

My only setback now is that my domain name(bobservo.com) is just set up to forward links to my blog (bobservo.livejournal.com). In this case, how would I make an http link to an ftp file? The whole forwarding thing seems to be screwing it up.

Thanks for all of your help so far, I'm hoping I can get this to work sooner or later.

[Matt]

All right for this, change the nameservers for your domain to ns1.apisnetworks.com and ns2.apisnetworks.com. Edit the file under /var/www/html/ named .htaccess again and add these lines:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://bobservo.livejournal.com/$1 [L]


What this does is check to see if the file exists on the server. If so, serve that file, otherwise redirect to your LiveJournal page.

What you're doing here is dropping the forwarding service through the registrar and emulating the functionality through the Web server with everyone's best friend, mod_rewrite (http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_rewrite.html).

[bobservo]

Okay, I added those lines to .htaccess in a directory under "html" that I labelled "enable." I threw up an mp3 in there and tried linking to it using this address:

http://bobservo.com/enable/Haruka Kanata.mp3

I got the following message:

Not Found
The requested URL //enable/Haruka Kanata.mp3 was not found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Am I still doing something wrong?

edit: I'm guessing maybe it will take some time for the nameserver change to take effect?

edit2: With the changing of the nameserver, bobservo.com no longer links to bobservo.livejournal.com. How can I fix this?

[Matt]

The .htaccess should just be under /var/www/html/. I removed the duplicate copy under /var/www/html/enable/ and the test URL was incorrect -- the file doesn't have a space in the name. Other than that, everything looks ok.

[bobservo]

Thanks! I actually changed the file name and tried it without the space afterwards because I thought the space might be screwing stuff up.

[derdewey]

This is a pretty cool little trick you've got going. These forums are handy.