Topic: Simple way to create webspace accounts?

[Joe Bob]

Love the SME box.  Super stable.

I have created accounts for a few friends so they can use my box as a webspace.  I followed this procedure:

Create a new user
Set a quota
Created a new group
Made that new user a part of the group
Created an ibay for them with write access for that group, read for all
Done.

It kind of takes a while.  

Is there an easier way to create web spaces for people to use that does not require creating individual groups for each user?

Just looking for a shortcut to creating simple web space folders for friends.  

Thanks.

[Jáder Marasca]

Do a search on contribs.org for web space or user web space !

There is a very nice addon!
I have it working on my server, take a look

       www.linuxfacil.net/~jader/

[Joe Bob]

What is the name of the add-on you have running?

I had no luck in my search..

Thanks!

[Del]

Look here:
http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=6833.msg24562#msg24562
hope this helps.
Regards,
Del

[Joe Bob]

Thanks it does.  The readme was a bit sketchy.  

If anyone has any other suggestions pass them along.  

I want to set up a box with an easy way to create simple accounts for friends and family to have a web space to use for pics and things.

Thanks.

[Jo]

Joe Bob wrote:

> I want to set up a box with an easy way to create simple
> accounts for friends and family to have a web space to use
> for pics and things.

The easiest way if for you to just set up i-bays and have them owned by groups that your friends and families belong to. Your friend Joe's website could be:

http://your.web.site/joe/

or

http://joe.your.domain/

(if you set up DNS correctly)

J.

[Joe Bob]

Good point.

However, for an individual ibay to be controlled by only one person, I would need to create a group that only had one user in it and make that group the one with control over that single ibay.

One person -> in one group -> controlling one ibay.

etc.

I was hoping to just skip the creation of groups and ibays and have a system where I can add a user and they would automatically have a web folder with ftp access to it.

Maybe a pipe dream?

Still looking for an easy solution....

Note: part of my interest is to use an SME box at my school and create an account for each student with access to a web folder.  Making a group and ibay for each kid would take a long time....

Thanks.

[Joe Bob]

Follow-up:

I did install this rpm for user webspace.
http://nomad.homelinux.net/esmith/library/addons/webspace/

All went well until I realized that there was a permission problem with people being able to view the contents of the web folder.

The author's solution was another script that ran every 5 min to reset all user's web folder permissions!  Not really what I had in mind...

The rpm has a good intent:  You create a user, set their password, and then they are ready to go with a "public_html" folder inside their home folder.  And they have ftp access to it.  Turns out the default permissions on the folder do not allow anyone to see the contents.   Hence the "fix" script.

Back to square one?? (banging my head on the wall)

[Martin Watson]

Hi,
How about e-smith-user-webspace, sounds a likely candidate.

http://www.watson-trant.homeunix.net/downloads/e-smith/web/

There's a howto doc in there as well.
Cheers,

Martin.

[Joe Bob]

Thanks, but that is the exact same rpm I was using that had the permissions errors.

Has anyone used this rpm successfully?  

Still looking (and banging my head on the wall).

Thanks for all the input and keep it coming.  If I find the "perfect solution" I will post how it worked out so others can learn.



SME servers rock now, and will really rock when I can get this implemented.

[Abe Loveless]

I think it depends on how the users are creating their files/directories that actually affects the permissions.

I assume they're creating their files through their mapped drive, using Samba.

This post from Damien Curtain (who wrote the original rpm, I believe):
http://e-smith.org/bboard/read.php?f=3&i=5827&t=5699 mentions the /etc/smb.conf file.


After briefly looking at this file, it looks like the smb.conf file specifies the permissions that are to be used when files/directories are created through Samba.  I'm thinking that  a new section needs to be specified for the "WebFiles" with different permissions in place.  Once someone comes up with the working section, it can be put into a template fragment.. and possibly added back into the rpm for everyone to use.

You guys have a little time to play with it?  I'll be happy to help with the rpm work when we get to that point.

[Abe Loveless]

It may be that simply altering the [homes] section is all that is needed.

Try these settings for /etc/smb.conf

[homes]
comment = Home directory
browseable = no
guest ok = no
read only = no
writable = yes
printable = no
create mode = 0644
force create mode = 06440
directory mode = 0755
force directory mode = 0755
path = /home/e-smith/files/users/%S/home

This comes from this howto:
http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/contribs/thaynes/beta/howto/samba/