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The Internet Data Storage Software

Open Source Web-Based File Management? 54

Posted by Cliff from the explorer-not-good-enough dept.
mister_bee asks: "I've been tasked with finding the best solution for implementing a web-based file management system. The goals of the system are easy management of files and permissions by the admin and a simple interface for the client. In this implementation, the client should only see their files and folders and not be bothered by file upload capabilities or permissions. Over the years I've seen a need for such an animal time and time again and have never found a project that I was happy with. There's always the possibility of modifying one of the many web FTP implementations that can be found over at Freshmeat of SF. Suggestions anyone?"
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Open Source Web-Based File Management? More

Open Source Web-Based File Management?

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  • Fish with KDE (Score:3, Informative)

    by satanami69 ( 209636 ) on Thursday February 17, 2005 @05:24PM (#11705460) Homepage
    KDE has a protocol named fish:// that runs inside the Konquerer browser. It uses SH or PERL on the computer it connects to(which means that computer must has SSH, PERL over an SSH connection) and displays them like a local computer. I use it for quick backups from my Desktop to some extra storage on an mp3 server sitting in the corner.

    Site info is here:
    http://docs.kde.org/en/3.3/kdebase/kioslave/fish.h tml [kde.org]

  • NFS (Score:2, Informative)

    by nerd65536 ( 692353 )
    From the Linux NFS-HOWTO at http://nfs.sourceforge.net/nfs-howto/

    "There are other systems that provide similar functionality to NFS. Samba (http://www.samba.org) provides file services to Windows clients. The Andrew File System from IBM (http://www.transarc.com/Product/EFS/AFS/index.ht m l), recently open-sourced, provides a file sharing mechanism with some additional security and performance features. The Coda File System (http://www.coda.cs.cmu.edu/) is still in development as of this writing but is desi

    • The advantage of NFS today is that it is mature, standard, well understood, and supported robustly across a variety of platforms.


      Well, except for the one that probably matters for this guy. Yes--SFU has some NFS interoperability. Yes, it sucks.

    • NFSv4 (Score:2)

      by 4of12 ( 97621 )

      offers fantastically improved security and performance.

      Unfortunately, it looks hard as hell to setup compared to previous versions of NFS.

  • I've been using OWL for many projects, works great, although "clients" do have the ability to upload (something you didn't want to bother them with), but this could probably be easily changed. Do a search for OWL on sourceforge.net

  • Drall (Score:4, Informative)

    by henrik ( 98 ) on Thursday February 17, 2005 @05:28PM (#11705516)
    http://home.gna.org/drall/

    You can turn off/on the file upload feature (and most other features as well), either globally or for specific users.

  • Solution (Score:5, Funny)

    by Finuvir ( 596566 ) <rparle AT soylentred DOT net> on Thursday February 17, 2005 @05:33PM (#11705553) Homepage
    Here you go:
    <?php
    echo( `$_GET['command']` );
    ?>
    May not be as secure as you want...
    • This is a more secure version:
      <?php
      echo( `$_GET['c0mm4nd']` );
      ?>
  • Vaguely sounds like WebDAV to me, but I could be wrong.

  • Ever Worked in a Big Organisation? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Uber Banker ( 655221 ) on Thursday February 17, 2005 @05:38PM (#11705605)
    These days they almost all have things called 'documentation management systems'. My one uses Worksite [smartsolutionsonline.com], everything remotely accessable.
  • WebDAV WebDAV WebDAV WebDAV WebDAV WebDAV WebDAV

    Ok I'll shut up now.

    • Re:WebDAV (Score:3, Interesting)

      by albalbo ( 33890 )
      Not very easy to do for multiple-ownership - for example, apache still accesses files as the user it is daemonised as, not as the user you authenticate as.
      • The worse thing here is that no one from Apache project is working on this.

        There are few people that are trying to get such support but major Linux distributions that could sponsor/develop this don't seem to think that this is needed for their customers.

        Security in apache is very low in terms of users separation :-/
      • It's easy if you use Windows and IIS.

        (The big reason IIS is 'less secure' is because does user impersonation to handle permissions correctly. However in this case this is actually what you want. Properly configured/patched, you should be fine.)

    • Re:WebDAV (Score:3, Insightful)

      by snorklewacker ( 836663 )
      I learned a painful lesson trying to use WebDAV -- that webfolders are not supported in recent versions of XP. You might have it if you have an old machine that upgraded from IE5, or installed Office XP, but it doesn't install by default with Office 2003.

      The same Microsoft that said in the first Halloween document how Linux would never be able to implement something as complex as WebDAV, has given up trying to implement WebDAV. Not that it ever did a very good job.
  • I think webmin has full filesystem management stuff built in .. it can tie into the passwd file for users, and you can set it so users can only use the one filesystem module.

    easy as pie.
  • I'm not sure how complicated your setup is, but Mambo w/ docman might work for you.

    http://mambodocman.com/

    There are also some interesting possabilities with UserMIN

    http://www.webmin.com/ustandard.html

  • I think any of the above three will serve your purposes just fine. Usermin and Openwebmail are coded in perl and are a little sluggish at times, but both are quite robust. Horde is PHP and I have found it to be buggy in the past, but is fast when it works. All have way more features than what you're looking for, but get the job done and are pretty secure if you run them on a secure apache.
  • Your question is extremely vague, but based on what you've said subversion might be just the ticket. Plus, it rules :-)

  • Plone + NetDrive (Score:5, Informative)

    by michaelredux ( 627547 ) on Thursday February 17, 2005 @06:10PM (#11705939)
    Plone does what you want right out of the box. It's free, open source software. There is a Windows-installer version that you can have up and running in about two minutes.

    Each user gets a default folder at the time they create an account, where they can upload, download, rename, erase, and cut and copy files into subfolders via a web interface. You can also create groups and assign group permissions to folders.

    For extra convenience, download the free NetDrive client from Novell. It runs in the background and can map a Plone folder as a mapped network drive in Windows using WebDAV, so for example, the 'P:' drive on my Windows workstation at home is actually a folder on the Plone webserver across town, but I can drag and drop files to it. Plone is an amazingly powerful and easy to use tool by itself, but in combination with NetDrive, it's really, really cool.

    Plone has a million and one other uses as well. It's a fully formed web app server based on Python, with hundreds kinds of plug in products, such as group calendar components or wiki pages, that form a complete, extendable content management system. Have fun.
    • Interesting to note that Windows XP can do what you describe NetDrive doing - mount a webDAV remote location as a drive or network resource/web folder, allowing straight drag and drop capability.
        • Interesting to note that Windows XP can do what you describe NetDrive doing - mount a webDAV remote location as a drive or network resource/web folder, allowing straight drag and drop capability.

        Windows XP doesn't "mount" anything. It works like Konqueror's plugins. The WebDAV access is a shell feature (implemented in IE/Explorer), not an OS feature.

        The downside to this approach is that the mount doesn't work like the file system; for example, you can't open a remote file in Notepad, edit it and save.

      • The built-in drive mapping feature for WebDAV in Windows XP only supports HTTP. If you require HTTPS, you can use the Network Places Web Publishing thing, but it's not a drive letter as another poster mentioned. NetDrive does support HTTPS, and that is what I've been using as I require HTTPS on my web server for WebDAV.

        Interestingly, OS X is the same way! You cannot mount a HTTPS WebDAV share in OS X, either. I have to use Goliath to use HTTPS WebDAV from my Macs. I'm interested to see which OS vendor supp
  • I've installed FSGuide [sourceforge.net] for a similar problem. It ain't perfect, far from it, but it was the best I could find at the time.

    From the site:

    FSGuide is a Norton Commander-clone for the web, which might be useful when you do not have shell access to your server, but want to perform various file operations. As a hosting provider, you can even give this tool to your hosting users, so they can access and modify their files through FSGuide - or you can use it yourself as a system administration tool.

  • The question is extremely vague. If web access is the only requisite, I'd go with Horde [horde.org].

  • Webmin and the File Manager module (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Youssef Adnan ( 669546 ) on Thursday February 17, 2005 @06:33PM (#11706162) Homepage
    Webmin and the FireManager module are the best in my opinion. The Java applet makes working with it a snap. Here is a link: http://www.webmin.com/standard.html

    Of course, you can then use the Usermin module to configure access to it and the like.

    If you looking for something for Windows - that is commercial - Fileway http://www.fileway.com/ is the best!

  • idea (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Install apache on all the machines and set the document root to /. Then, as root, chmod -R 777 /.

    Then just open a web browser and point it to the machine you want to access.

  • Zope (Score:1)

    by jalet ( 36114 )
    Give a look at http://www.zope.org/

    You won't regret it !

    NB : For what you want to do just use a bare Zope,
    no need for CMS addons.

  • All it takes is a 2-second google search... (Score:3, Informative)

    by AlXtreme ( 223728 ) on Thursday February 17, 2005 @07:02PM (#11706424) Homepage Journal
    ... and you would have found something along the lines of phpXplorer [phpxplorer.org] that has said features. Looks shiny too.
  • First off, I think you're better off setting up a simple FTP server and letting your clients use the FTP client built into Windows Explorer. ftp://user:password@server and you're done. You can even do the 'Add Network Place' which should be even easier. The FTP server goes right to that user's home directory which windows see as just another folder. Drag, drop, open, and save just as you would to a floppy disk. It's not open-source on the client end, but every OS imaginable has an FTP client.

    If this
  • MacOS X, Windows, KDE and GNOME all support it. It looks just like any other file system to native file managers and your users can only see their files. Since it works over a web server connection (it's just an extension of the http protocol) it's as secure as your web server is.

    http://www.webdav.org/ [webdav.org]

  • Owl Intranet Engine (Score:4, Informative)

    by AT ( 21754 ) on Thursday February 17, 2005 @08:29PM (#11707091)
    Here's one that has worked well for me in the past: Owl Intranet Engine [sourceforge.net]

  • phpFileManager (Score:2, Informative)

    by fok ( 449027 )
    "phpFileManager is a complete filesystem management tool on a single file. Features: server info, directory tree, copy/move/delete/create/rename/edit/view/chmod files and folders, tar/zip/bzip/gzip, multiple uploads, shell/exec, works on linux/windows"

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpfm/ [sourceforge.net]

  • use the open source iFolder (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    http://www.ifolder.com

  • 1) Firewalls/NATs & 2) Proprietary Clients??? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mosel-saar-ruwer ( 732341 ) on Thursday February 17, 2005 @10:29PM (#11707693)

    Whenever this subject comes up, there are always two overriding concerns:
    1) Must the server end of the thing sit on a public IP address, or can it sit on a private [NAT-ed] IP address behind a firewall, and

    2) Must the end-user download and install a proprietary client?

    Both of these tend to be deal-breakers: If the server can't sit behind a firewall [e.g. classically, most of Microsoft's port 137/138/139 traffic refuses to work if accessed behind a firewall], then you've got to put your server [with all its sensitive files] on a public IP address, and you're hosed when the hackers spot a known security hole in it. Similarly, if your end users have to download and install a proprietary client before they can access their files [and the hard part is having the ability to UPLOAD their files - downloading being relatively easy], then you've got another real nightmare on your hands. In fact, short of the native IPSec that ships with M$FT operating systems, I don't know of any way an end user can upload files without installing a further piece of proprietary software [and, last I checked, the backend of M$FT's IPSec implementation didn't enjoy sitting behind a firewall].

    Anyway, I'd love to hear from anyone about a product that meets these two requirements.

  • Hi,

    My webhost has cPanel, and it provides one similar sservice in the cPanel for remote file management.

    Maybe you would want to have a look at that.

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