USS Voyager Posted March 27, 2009 Posted March 27, 2009 I'm currently working for a University and we are trying to figure out a way to let our students access their home directories from the Internet when they are off campus. We are a windows based campus. Does anyone have any suggestions? Quote
LauBen Posted March 27, 2009 Posted March 27, 2009 Hello, Could you not look at setting up at a sharepoint server, and then allow your users to upload and download as required? Quote
digip Posted March 27, 2009 Posted March 27, 2009 Depending on the permissions and links in the system, you used to be able to reach home user directories by adding a tilda and the user name appended to the site address. Example: www.somesite.com/~johnsmith/ would give you www access to johnsmiths files. Just be sure every user has an index.html file in their home folder/path and you add what files you want readable to the index file or whatever. They can even go as far as making their own home pages. Also, have set up proper permissions for what is www readable, because if you allow ALL files in their home directory to be www readable, some deduction can be done as to what default files exist and coudl be downloaded by anyone. I used to find a lot of college sites back in the day(any .edu domain) would for whatever reason have all the apache users home directories www readable, inclduing root (/~root) which exposed the passwd shadow files in plain text. THis was unix based systmes though. Not sure what you would do with windows. Quote
digip Posted March 27, 2009 Posted March 27, 2009 sftp I agree, sftp is a good alternative, but depending on the users of the class, are they savvy with stuff like secure ftp clients or would they prefer to just have web pages for each user. What kind of class are they in? Quote
digip Posted March 27, 2009 Posted March 27, 2009 Installing FileZilla isn't hard. Nope. Just wondering if this is a computer class, where they should kno whow to do this, or general students who want to access stuff like school work or whatever. Quote
USS Voyager Posted March 27, 2009 Author Posted March 27, 2009 This would be for all 13,000 students of the University. We'd prefer a solution where the students wouldn't have to install any software. with the exception of Java and flash of course. Quote
USS Voyager Posted March 27, 2009 Author Posted March 27, 2009 Could sharepoint actually connect to all of the user's home directories? Quote
digip Posted March 27, 2009 Posted March 27, 2009 How do they access their home folder when ON campus vs OFF campus. What are they currently doing when on campus? Is there some sort of intranet portal they logon to? What kinds of things are stored in their folders that they need access to? Maybe a VPN of some sort would work and then each user logs on to the vpn, giving them access only to their file share. Quote
dr0p Posted March 28, 2009 Posted March 28, 2009 I use SFTP ^_^ It's really really easy to setup and use. Quote
freeb Posted March 28, 2009 Posted March 28, 2009 Have a look at http://www.http-com.com/ Its web based and has AD intergation, but it's not free, although the demo is. Quote
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