On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 6:55 PM, Jerry M <[email protected]> wrote:
> Thanks for the response.  But now, I'm really confused.  I wasn't planning
> on having to write java code just to be able to use this server out of the
> box for my server needs.  I want to replace IIS on my host machine for all
> of my clients and use the Apache FTP server for all FTP needs.  I don't have
> off the wall requirements.  Just a bunch of users that need to get to their
> domain directories (while I and other admins can FTP to any of the domain
> directories, etc.
>
> I thought I could download the server, install it, create a configuration
> XML file or preferably a database and be up and running.

Right, you can. What misled me was your use of "embedded", something
we normally call it when you embed FtpServer into your Java
application rather than running it standalone. For running it
standalone, which seems to be what you want, here's the basic tutorial
to get you started:
http://mina.apache.org/ftpserver/running-ftpserver-stand-alone-in-5-minutes.html

After that, most of what you might want to do is described in the
documentation for the configuration.
http://mina.apache.org/ftpserver/documentation.html

> Now you're telling me that if I want virtual directories, I've got to write
> Java code?
>
> I'm a veteran java programmer.  But I have no knowledge of Spring or what it
> is (other than what I read, briefly).  And if I'm writing code, that means I
> have to create classes... subclasses of what?  Do I write my own main?  How
> do I register my code.
>
> But I'm diverging.  I didn't make time on my schedule to write an FTP server
> or any part of one.

No, you do not need to write any classes if you want to run FtpServer
out of the box. Of course, we do offer some APIs for extending
FtpServer if you find it doesn't fulfill you needs.

> Even in your code, you didn't answer my fundamental question.....  can I
> have one user read/write certain directories on the server (random
> directories, not all neatly nested under 'My Documents" or "MyRoot"), and
> have another user read/write a different set of directories (possibly with
> overlap to the directories of the first user?

Now, you didn't ask that fundamental question so I didn't know to
reply to it :-) Anyways, the answer is yes.

> In your code, you simply said, "load the config file" which I guess implies
> that somewhere all of that info I was describing is defined in the config
> file.  But I still have no clue.  The database schema doesn't seem to have
> any tables or fields that support that.

The configuration file is an XML file, you can find several examples
in the release download as well as documentation on our site.

> I think you need an end-to-end real-life installation/configuration example
> of using this server in a medium-large scale environment (other than single
> user, etc).  I know it's new.  And if you tell me it's just not ready for
> prime time yet, so be it.  I'll be disappointed.  But I'll wait.

Have a look at the tutorial and our other documentation and see how
far that gets you. Also, there are lots of people on this mailing list
who are happy to help you out if you get stuck. And, we're always
improving both the code and documentation so let us know if there is
anything your missing.

When you say "medium-large scale", is that number of users, concurrent
users, complex configuration or some other parameter? I know of
several large deployments of FtpServer with users that seems to be
happy, but I'll let them tell you instead (if they want to of course).

> But please tell me I don't have to learn a new Java framework and write a
> java library in order to use this server for the basic IIS-equivalent
> function.  That's definitely not the model for any other server at Apache.

Well, you don't (unless you want to embed it into a Java application
that is) but a major pro with FtpServer compared to IIS, FileZilla or
the many other FTP servers out there is likely our API.

/niklas

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