Brian Mearns wrote:
On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 7:48 PM, Angelo Chen <[email protected]> wrote:
[...]
Well, there's a DAV module, which is an extension to the HTTP protocol
that has additional methods (to GET, POST, HEAD, etc.) for sharing
files...but I believe that requires a special client to use the
additional methods.
If your users use Windows workstations, you don't need a special client,
the normal Windows Explorer will do.
Configure a location on your server that will be shared as a "DAV
folder". Say it corresponds to the location "/shared-folders" from an
Apache point of view. Look at the on-line docs to do this properly
(http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_dav.html), and pay attention
to the "Security Issues" (you are going to allow users to write to your
server's filesystem, so do this carefully).
To connect to this server folder, and make it look to your users just
like a remote "network folder" in the Windows Explorer, have them do the
following :
In Windows Explorer (not IE, the normal File Explorer), go to "my
network places" and click on "create a new network place" (or whatever
it's called in English). Click Ok a couple of times, until it asks you
for a URL. Then enter "http://myhost.mycompany.com:80/shared-folders";
and click OK. If you have configured authentication (highly
recommended), it will now ask you for a user-id and password. When
you're done, you'll see a new directory in the Windows Explorer, into
which you can just drag and drop files from the local workstation.
A tip : when entering the URL above, make sure to enter the ":80" part
after the hostname, even if it is the standard port 80.
Otherwise, Explorer will think this is a Windows network share, and pop
up a message saying it can't find it.
If you know a server-side scripting language, such as PHP, it would be
pretty easy to write a web app to do what you're looking for, and I'm
sure there are several that exist already (though I don't know of any
specifically).
Unless you find a well-tested module which does this kind of thing, I
would recommend against it. It is just too easy to make mistakes there,
in terms of server security e.g., and consequently exposing your whole
server to risk. DAV is a well-tested module and will avoid many pitfalls.
Now, once again, just to make sure you have got the message : when you
"share" a directory on your server via DAV, you are giving the
possibility to users to see all that's in it with their Windows
Explorer, and to upload files to it, possibly overwriting what's already
there. So do not do this, for example, with your DocumentRoot or the
/etc directory. Ok ?
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