AJS 3.x Manual

Note! This Manual is for the "Forms authentication" version. This version requires you to create each account and store credentials in the HTTP Commander XML database. If you have Windows server or Active Directory accounts already and want to use them in the HTTP Commander, you need to download the "Windows authentication" version! This Manual is for the Forms authentication version only!

Web file manager Free Installation assistance

HTTP Commander Admin panel

The Admin panel provides a user-friendly web user interface to setup folders for users. Information about assigned folders is stored in the Data\Folders.xml file. You can modify this file manually with a text editor. Also you can programmatically setup users and groups.

To run Admin panel:

• User should be an HTTP Commander Administrator, i.e his/her name should be listed in the Administrators key at Application settings
• Check that Read and Modify NTFS permissions for Data\ folder are set correctly.
• Open "/HTCOMNET/AdminPanel.aspx" in a browser or click Administration button on the toolbar of the main interface.

• Open the "Users" tab and click "Add user..." to create a new user, or "Edit user..." to edit the existing one.
• In the new window you can type the user name and password.
• To assign users to the group, open the "Groups" tab. You can create new groups and to add existing users to it.
• Note! If you want to edit users and groups directly in the database, then open file Data\Accounts.xml with Notepad.

• Open the "Folders" tab and click "Add folder..." to create a new folder, or "Edit folder..." to edit an existing one.
• In the new window you can type a folder name (alias), a full path and manage the access for users to this folder:
  • Insert an alias for the folder in the "Folder name" field, e.g. "My personal folder" or "Students shared", etc.

    Note You cannot use alias "root" for technical reasons.

  • Insert the full path to the folder in "Physical path" field. It can be a local path (e.g. 'c:\myfolder') , remote folder on a server (UNC format like \\MyServer\filesharename\directoryname) or DFS folder (like \\domain\DFSfolder).
    You can use the following patterns in the folder path:
    • %USERNAME% or %LOGONUSER% - the pattern will be replaced by the user's logon name. For example, if you create "c:\personalfolders\%USERNAME%" for "jdoe" user, the path will be "c:\personalfolders\jdoe" when 'jdoe' logons into the HTTP Commander.
    • %GROUPNAME% - the pattern will be replaced by the logon user's group name. For example, if you create "c:\%GROUPNAME%\%USERNAME%" for "Mike" user from "Students" group, the path will be "c:\Students\Mike".
    • %USERNAME_SUBSTRN_L% - the pattern will be replaced by a substring of the user's logon name. N is start index (starting at 1), L is length of substring. For example, %USERNAME_SUBSTR1_1% for Mike user will be "M".
    • %GROUPNAME_SUBSTRN_L% - the same as above but for the group name.
    Note! Don't share folders inside the application root folder (deleting some files and folders in the application folders restarts the application).
• Now you need to specify users and groups who can have access to the created folder:
  • Click the "Add user..." button to provide access for a single user, or "Add group..." to provide access for a group of users.

  • In the user/group selection dialogue, enter a user/group name or select the name from the list, for example, jdoe or Students2009. When HTTP Commander is configured to use Windows accounts, we recommend that you specify a fully qualified user/group name with domain part. For example, YOURDOMAIN\Students2009 or jdoe@YOURDOMAIN. See Active Directory integration for complete list of supported account name formats.

    Here you can also use a regular expression:

    Insert "regex:" in the beginning of the line if you want to use regular expression.
    Example 1: regex:^(jdoe|Mike)$ - this regular expression means two users: jdoe and Mike.
    Example 2: regex:Students - this regular expression means all groups with "Students" in their names, e.g. "Students2008", "Students2009", etc.
  • If you want to provide access for any user, you need to type regex:.* - this regular expression means any user name.
• After the users or groups are specified, you need to configure permissions to the folder for selected users and groups. There are two layers of access control that determine the set of allowed operations with the file system.
  1. NTFS permissions (provided the file system is hosted on NTFS volume) applies to a Windows security principal.
  2. HTTP Commander permissions specify what operations are allowed in the application.

  To configure HTTP Commander permissions...

  • Select a user or a group name in the list.
  • Set necessary permissions on the right panel.
• Click the "Save" button to save changes.
• The user should logoff and logon again to view new created folders.
• Extra parameters: You can type "Limitations" for the folder-this is text that will be shown for users at the most visible place. There is also a "Description" field - it is text that will be shown for users in the left tree.

HTTP Commander permissions

Public folders

On this tab, you can manage (edit, delete) public links to files and folders created by users. You can also add new public links.

Admin permissions

You can specify which users/groups are allowed to manage settings, folders, accounts, localizations, view event logs, errors, diagnostics.

Also on this tab, you can add folders and specify them for users/groups who will be able to administer.

Filter

HTTP Commander allows to specify a filter to express additional restrictions on the set of users whom the specific folder is assigned. This filter applies in addition to ACL (the list of users and groups that are allowed access) and can express complex conditions. The syntax of the filter is similar to the syntax of LDAP queries.

An elementary filter looks like this:

(attribute = "value"),

where attribute is either user or group, value - the value of the attribute. The attribute value may contain substitution characters: *, ?.

Note, brackets and quotes are mandatory. Comparison is case-insensitive.

To create a complex filter, individual components are composed into a filter list using logical AND (&), OR (|), NOT (!) operations. For example, (&(|(user="user*")(user="Admin"))(!(group="group1"))). This filter matches a user with the name "Admin" and users whose names begin on "user", that are not members of the "group1" group.

For validate syntax of the filter entered by you, it is used the link Validate to left side of a field.

Diagnostics and License information

On the Admin panel, you can open the Diagnostics page (click the Diagnostics button in the toolbar) or view license type (click the License information button on the toolbar).

Mail settings

The MailSettings group on the Settings tab in Admin Panel allows you to specify the settings of the SMTP server. These settings are used to send e-mails by HTTP Commander. E-mails are sent by recover user password and send e-mail features. Users may send e-mails to share links to files and folders.

MailSettings group represents mailSettings Element of .Net configuration. See MSDN for comprehensive description of parameters.

Note You need to assign modify permission to the application pool identity for the web.config file as specified in NTFS permissions section, otherwise HTTP Commander is not able to save your modifications.