topic Re: FTP Home Folder in Alfresco Archive

FTP Home Folder

dsupina — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 14:39:29 GMT

How to set up system to provide auto login to home folder (eg. Alfresco/User Homes/username/) when users acces Alfresco via FTP?I tried to activate homeFolder in file-servers.xml like bellow, but with no sucess. Users still get in root folder, not in home folder. Alfresco 3.4.a on CentOS 5.5.Thanks!

Re: FTP Home Folder

moisei — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 15:48:50 GMT

I have a similar issue with Alfresco 3.4d.
Did you find a way to resolve it?

Re: FTP Home Folder

romschn — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 10:27:08 GMT

You can specify the default directory, to be displayed to the user when he logs in through FTP, in file-servers-context.xml.

Search for the bean ftpServerConfig in file-servers-context.xml and put an entry as shown in the example below :
<property name="rootDirectory">
<value>/Alfresco/Test</value>
</property>
The first part of the path should be the file system name, optionally followed by one or more folder names.

It will navigate the user to the specified folder.

You may want to do the customization in java code to navigate to specific user's home space as per your requirement.

Hope this helps

Thanks,

Re: FTP Home Folder

moisei — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 10:41:41 GMT

Thanks! This worked apparently.
Can you please clarify which java code I supposed to change to make user going directly to home space?
And how can I configure the permissions, so the user can't browse anything outside of the home space?

Thanks again!

Re: FTP Home Folder

romschn — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 10:55:23 GMT

You may need to customize the setRootDirectory() method of FTPConfigBean.java.

You will first have to identify how the path to the users home space looks and do the modification in above method accordingly, which will read the initial path till User Home directory (e.g. /Alfresco/User Homes/) from the XML and file and append the user's home directory in above method.

I think, there is no need to handle permission separately as the user will only be able to see his space using above mechanism. This should work hopefully.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Re: FTP Home Folder

moisei — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 11:42:17 GMT

is there some way to have a variable which refers a current user name?
something like:
      <property name="rootDirectory">
         <value>/Alfresco/Home Users/${current_user_name}</value>
      </property>

Also, I don't see how it helps to prohibit user from browsing other folders?
For example, once I setup rootDirectory to /Alfresco/Test, the user is still able to cd .. and
get to the common root folder.

Re: FTP Home Folder

romschn — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 06:16:19 GMT

I don't think it would be possible to have a variable you can put in context.xml file. Instead as i mentioned earlier you will have to customize the setRootDirectory method of FTPConfigBean.java.

Also, you are not required to handle permission at FTP side. You will require it to handle from alfresco side.

By default, all the spaces created under compay home will have read permission for every user as inherit Parent space permission checkbox is checked by default when you create a new space.

This checkbox can be found at - go to view detail of space/Under Action secion, click on Manage Space Users.

You can go to each space, click on manage space users and uncheck the above checkbox and only invite the uesrs to whom you want to have access to that space.

This way, user can only see/access the spaces he is permitted to.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Re: FTP Home Folder

moisei — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 06:32:19 GMT

Great! I'll review the permissions of the user.

As for a customizing a code of the setRootDirectory method of FTPConfigBean.java,
I am just wondering is it a normal practice, to edit the code of alfresco on production platforms?
Right now, I am installing it from the setup and I don't compile it myself.
Once I change the code, I'll have to support it also in the next versions,
after every upgrade, will I not? Is there some guides on that?

Thanks,
Moisei.

Re: FTP Home Folder

romschn — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 06:44:34 GMT

You do not directly customize the code in alfresco classes.It should be avoided to directly adding our customization in existing alfresco classes. You can extend the required classes and override the required code to put your own behavior.

Alfresco has provided the very good implementation in which you can have your customized code to be part of extensions. All your customized configuration should be part of your extension folder.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Re: FTP Home Folder

romschn — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 07:18:46 GMT

I don't think customizing FTPConfigBean class would help us here. Sorry for it.

As setting up of FTPConfigBean would be one time activity in which we can specify root directory to refer till "User homes" space. And as per my understanding, this would not get initialized on each user login.

To dynamically add the username part to it, FTPConfigBean doesn't seem right place to me.

I think, when user logs in through FTP that time after authentication, the root path should be appended with the user name. Will have to identify the correct location to do so.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Re: FTP Home Folder

romschn — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 08:49:53 GMT

Hi,

Good news for you. No customization would be required to achieve this functionality.

We can achieve this by handling appropriate permission for users on spaces in alfresco.

You need to do below things.
1. Need to specify the root folder path as below : in the file
    <property name="rootDirectory">
     <value>/Alfresco/User Homes</value>
    </property>

2. You need to manage the permission on spaces.
    e.g. Remove the EVERYONE users from user's own home spaces.
     i.e User-1's home space should have only User-1 under manage space users dialog.
          User-2's home space should have only User-2 under manage space users dialog.

this way, when user-1 logs in through FTP, he will directly be navigated to User Homes folder. Despite of being all the users individual user home spaces are present under this folder, as user-1 has access to only User-1's home space, he can only see his own home space.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,