3

I'm running an Ubuntu 10.4 system. I have freedom to install mostly whatever packages I need (free non-commercial only) and I can program/script C++, python, JavaScript comfortably and probably work with PHP and Java if needed.

My goal is to allow users to access the server via a web page, see the file contents of a user specific directory that they can upload and download to/from.

This is a throwaway prototype solution too, so I don't need or want anything extensible or flexible or secure or even scalable, just something very simple and quick that could handle a couple of users uploading and downloading simultaneously, the main caveat being that the files being uploaded/downloaded might be measured in gigabytes.

I've done very little web application development and only some Linux development and my research has led me to LAMP, python CGIHTTPServer, tomcat, but I suspect there is something simple that I'm missing.

I'm trying to minimize the amount of programming/scripting I do for this, so I'm hoping a drop in package exists.

John Gardeniers
  • 27,458
  • 12
  • 55
  • 109
Vusak
  • 141
  • 1
  • 5
  • webdav not fulfill your needs? – zen May 26 '11 at 04:42
  • @zen - no idea, havent heard of it, \*googles\* – Vusak May 26 '11 at 05:10
  • @zen - well i got lighttpd running with the webdav module, and i can list the contents of a directory with a browser, but i cant see how to perform an upload to that directory from the browser - i might have to make a new question for that issue. – Vusak May 27 '11 at 01:50

2 Answers2

1

Well i ended up doing the following:

apt-get'd lighttpd

edited the lighttpd conf:

  • to point it at /var/www/
  • enabled mod_cgi cgi.assign ".py" => ""
  • enabled dir-listing.show-header
  • set dir-listing.exclude HEADER.txt

i then added an executable upload.py script using cgitb and cgi to copy the file to /var/www/

i then created a HEADER.txt in /var/www/ which had HTML for a typical multipart form upload that pointed at my upload.py

i also had to ensure that the concerned directories and files were appropriately permission'd and the py script executable of course.

and this was sufficient for me to be able to use dir-listing to access and download files from /var/www on the server, and use the form+python to upload files to /var/www/ on the server.

its not particularly secure or anything, but it's doing the job so far.

Vusak
  • 141
  • 1
  • 5
  • i gave it a few days, but now i think its fair to mark my own answer as the most appropriate at this stage. – Vusak May 31 '11 at 00:38
0

You might take a look at SME. It is CentOS based (versus Ubuntu), but it may fit your requirements "out of the box" based on how its functionality is packaged.

user48838
  • 7,431
  • 2
  • 18
  • 14
  • Unfortunately I'm more interested in a package based deployment, as I need to install other packages on the server that I know work on Ubuntu 10.4, and as it is meant to be quick and dirty I don't want to have to research potential compatibility/support/dependency issues on those other packages. – Vusak May 27 '11 at 01:49
  • In that case, there are multiple options available when searching against the Ubuntu Software Center with the search term of "CMS" - you just have to sort through the hits for results which are actually related to "content management" via HTTP. – user48838 May 27 '11 at 19:48