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Web Services: Remote Web Page Maintenance


File Location and Server Information

WWW files for the Colorado School of Mines are served from a dedicated server (www.mines.edu). Users do not have direct access to this computer, but files are accessable from your Slate/email account.

By examing the WWW address, the location of the files on Slate can easily be determined in most cases. CSM's WWW address is:

http://www.mines.edu/
This addresses our web server's "ROOT" directory. Because of how we have configured our server this actually refers to two directories:
/www/CSM_home/
/www/
CSM server, maintanence, and help files are largely under /www/CSM_home/. Almost all other files (student, faculty, staff, department, and organization) reside under /www/.

Following CSM's WWW address, is the homepage address on the server. This is a directory name, and possibly a file name, below the above ROOT directory. For example, the web page:

http://www.mines.edu/fs_home/jdoe/index.shtml
can be accessed from the file system, by opening the file:
/www/fs_home/jdoe/index.shtml
Sometimes the file name is not explicitly specified, and only the directory name is given. This situation is indicated by the final character in the WWW address being a '/', e.g.:
http://www.mines.edu/fs_home/jdoe/
Because no file name is specified, the WWW server has several options. By default, the web server will check for four files in the following order:
index.shtml, index.html, index.htm, index.cgi
(This is specific to this server). The server will load the the first file found. If no files are found, a list of all the files and sub-directories in the specified directory will be displayed.

If you need to locate CGI files, the location rules are somewhat different.

Uploading and Downloading Files

Users for many reason choose to create and edit there files on remote computers. The most common reasons is that they are not familiar with the UNIX operating system or the UNIX text editors, or they prefer the MS-Windows or Macintosh development tools.

These are valid reasons, but they do complicate home page maintanence. By creating and editing files remotely, there are a number of steps that must be followed. These are discussed below:

Uploading (PC -> WWW server) an Existing File to the Server

Required Steps:
  • FTP (file transfer protocol) to Slate (use ftp, sftp or another FTP client software).
    • Select file on your local PC
    • Select the destination directory and the Slate filesystem.
    • If it is a ASCII file (text or HTML file) use a text transfer mode
    • If it is a graphic file, a compressed file, an executeable program, or other non ASCII file, use a binary transfer mode.
    • Transfer (put) the file.

  • If the transfered file is new, chances are the read and write permissions are incorrect. Without world read permissions, the HTTPD server will not let any browser view the file.
  • log into Slate (use telnet or ssh/slogin)
    • cd to the directory where the file is located on the Slate filesystem.
    • Use the following command.

      prompt> chmod a+r <filename>

    • If you are working on a group file, you also need to change group permissions and ownerships. Use the following commands:

      prompt> chmod g+rw <filename>
      prompt> chgrp <group_name> <filename>

Downloading (PC <- WWW server) an Existing File to the Remote Computer

Required Steps:
  • FTP (file transfer protocol) to Slate (use ftp, sftp or any other FTP client software)
    • Select file on Slate
    • Select the destination directory or your remote computer (exactly how this is done will vary by the software package you are using).
    • If it is a ASCII file (text or HTML file) use a text transfer mode
    • If it is a graphic file, a compressed file, an executeable program, or other non ASCII file, use a binary transfer mode.
    • Transfer (get) the file.

Editing Files on Remote (Home / Office) Computer

Once you have the HTML file on your remote computer, you can use any editor that you are comfortable with to edit the file. If you are familiar with HTML, you can use any text editor or word processor (make sure you save in ASCII mode). If you are not familiar with HTML, there are many freeware and shareware editors available. You can download a editor off the internet from a number of sites. See our Utilities->WWW Freeware and Shareware page for various links (I personally like Tucows and ZDNet Software Library).

From these sites you can also download ftp, telnet, browser, archive, virus, game, etc. software.

File Access Permissions

Often after transfering files to the WWW server, the file cannot be found by your browser or other group members cannot edit the file. This is usually caused by the file having incorrect access permissions. The HTTPD server will not send a requested file to any browser, unless it was world read permissions. To check and correct the file permissions, log into Slate (use telnet or ssh/slogin) and use the following steps:
  • cd to the directory where the file is located on the Slate filesystem.
  • Check the file permissions.

    prompt> ls -l <filename>

    You will get a response like:

    -rw-r-----   1 jdoe  staff   2552 Oct 30 17:30 remote.shtml

    The last three ---'s are what is of interest to the browser. These represent the world read, write, and execute permissions. The a browser to access this file, the read permission field must be set. For group access the middle r-- fields are of interest.

  • To set the world read permission field, use the following command.

    prompt> chmod a+r <filename>

    When you retry the ls command, you will see the file permissions have changed to:

    -rw-r--r--   1 jdoe  staff    2552 Oct 30 17:30 remote.shtml

  • If you are working on a group file, you also need to change group permissions and ownerships. Use the following commands:

    prompt> chmod g+rw <filename>
    prompt> chgrp <group_name> <filename>

    When you retry the ls command, you will see the file permissions have changed to:

    -rw-rw-r--   1 jdoe  goldmine    2552 Oct 30 17:30 remote.shtml

Questions and comments -- open a ticket at Mines Help Center
Thursday, 13-Sep-2007 09:43:00 MDT