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simonmartin · Jul 11, 2002, 09:57 AM

I have managed to get ftp working on a spare mac but I would like to allow outsiders to upload files to my "dropbox" by ftp. At the moment I can only access my home folder on the server with the full username/password. Then I can access and see the *whole* home folder. If I enter in "guest" as a password I get bumped off.

How can I allow a password of "guest" and then allow read/write access only to one specific folder?

I could create a user of guest/guest but it's not very elegant... (read Mac-like! :-) and I'd like people to be able to drop docs into *my* dropbox...

Thanks

Simon
London Uk

[ 07-11-2002, 10:26 AM: Message edited by: simonmartin ]

davechen · Jul 11, 2002, 11:12 AM

You pretty much have to make a guest account. OS X (and other Unixes) don't allow more than on password for a given user name. Once you've done that you can set up a link so that your drop box shows up in the guest's home directory.

simonmartin · Jul 11, 2002, 11:40 AM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by davechen:
You pretty much have to make a guest account. OS X (and other Unixes) don't allow more than on password for a given user name. Once you've done that you can set up a link so that your drop box shows up in the guest's home directory.<hr /></blockquote>Dave,

That's a good idea... You mean just drop an alias of my dropbox into the shared (for instance) folder in the "guest" home folder?

I'll give it a go.

Thanks

Simon
London Uk

Millennium · Jul 11, 2002, 01:28 PM

There's a more secure way of doing this, but it will take some NetInfo finagling:

Create a user named "ftp" in group "ftp".</li>
Disable login for ftp, and point its shell to /dev/null (this user won't be doing formal logins anyway).</li>
Set the home directory of ftp to be the folder containing your drop box (presumably /Users/username/Public).</li>
Put yourself in the ftp group.</li>
(Close out of NetInfo; we're done there).</li>
chgrp your Public folder (and the drop box) to ftp.</li>
Make your Public folder group readable and group writeable (user and group ONLY, not global).</li>
Make your drop box (which should be in your Public folder) group writable, but readable only to you.
</li>

This will allow standard anonymous FTP, which will go into your Public folder.
DiSCLAIMER: I don't know if this is the most secure way of doing things. It's the most secure way I could think of to do what you want. There may be better ways, though. Yes, this is hard. There's a reason for that. Allowing anonymous FTP users to upload files is a huge security risk. The only time I ever got hacked was because of this, actually (I didn't use this method back then).

simonmartin · Jul 11, 2002, 01:46 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Millennium:
There's a more secure way of doing this, but it will take some NetInfo finagling:

Disable login for ftp, and point its shell to /dev/null (this user won't be doing formal logins anyway).</li>
Set the home directory of ftp to be the folder containing your drop box (presumably /Users/username/Public).</li>
Put yourself in the ftp group.</li>
(Close out of NetInfo; we're done there).</li>
chgrp your Public folder (and the drop box) to ftp.</li>
Make your Public folder group readable and group writeable (user and group ONLY, not global).</li>
Make your drop box (which should be in your Public folder) group writable, but readable only to you.
</li>

This will allow standard anonymous FTP, which will go into your Public folder.
DiSCLAIMER: I don't know if this is the most secure way of doing things. It's the most secure way I could think of to do what you want. There may be better ways, though. Yes, this is hard. There's a reason for that. Allowing anonymous FTP users to upload files is a huge security risk. The only time I ever got hacked was because of this, actually (I didn't use this method back then).<hr /></blockquote>Millenniun,
Wow, thanks for that but it sounds a bit too complex for my brain, sadly. I might give it a go though...

At the moment I am attempting to get SAMBA running, using Xamba.

Do you think this might be an easier bet?

At the moment I'm falling at an early hurdle: When attempting to "Restart all NetInfo domains on localhost" in Netinfo Manager I get: "Can't finf process id for 'nibindd'"

I have emailed the developer but I don't know if you can help there...

Thanks mate

Simon
London Uk

dont.wanna.tell · Jul 11, 2002, 07:21 PM

Uhm... you might do all this....

Or you might check out VersionTracker! ;-)

Have a look at <a href="http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=13170&db=mac" target="_blank">anonFTP</a> to do it all for you...

Have a nice day,

cu Martin