[Year 12 IT Apps] FTP to school internal server...?

Brett Groves groves.brett.g at edumail.vic.gov.au
Wed Jul 21 13:30:43 EST 2010


Hmmm......odd.

Joomla normally requires an ftp client account to be created during 
setup. Is it possible that the ftp account doesn't have 
read/write/execute access to the folder in which your website resides??

It's difficult to try and problem solve without a full and complete 
picture of the situation.

Ftp can be suppressed according to an IP range etc etc and in fact can 
be set to only include localhost access. There are so many possible 
variations of what could be going on here. Even if you have a bandwidth 
management tool like Exinda installed, the rules on that could be 
blocking you out.

Bottom line your Tech staff should be able to resolve it fairly easily 
and there is no real reason to not allow ftp access to your website, in 
fact it is counter productive as you have found out. FTP can certainly 
be secured to the same extent that Apache2 can be secured, as Roland 
added SFTP is yet more secure. There is no point in a website that is 
not quick and easy to update...otherwise might as well use a book :-).

Regards

Brett Groves
(If you get really desperate contact me off list and I will do what I 
can to help groves.brett.g at edumail.vic.gov.au)


On 19/07/10 23:15, George Ciotti wrote:
> Thanks for the reply Brett. The thing is the test site is open to the 
> web. In other words you can access the site on the web and I can 
> actually get into the backend (we are using a Joomla CMS system) and 
> do most things in the backend except upload media and alter CSS files 
> etc, hence the need for FTP access. Although uploading images and 
> files should be able to be accessed from within the Joomla back end at 
> the very least, this points to the fact that one cannot access the 
> server that the site resides on to alter files.
> The other, and most important, issue is that I have been told that we 
> cannot use an external ( third party ) ISP. It would be much easier if 
> we could, problem solved in fact, and I did initially recommend this 
> but was informed by our tech support that the department would not 
> allow this setup. ??? Hence we seem to have a convoluted setup with 
> limited and unworkable access.
> Do you use a third party ISP to house your school's front-of-house 
> website? Your reply below seems to suggest you do?
>
> Cheers
> George
>
> -->
> The University High School
> 77 Story Street, Parkville, Vic, 3052, Australia
> Ph: (03) 9347 2022
> mobile: 0412934782
>
>
> On 7/19/10 9:58 PM, "Brett Groves" <groves.brett.g at edumail.vic.gov.au> 
> wrote:
>
>     Hi George,
>
>     Your Techs will need to put the server concerned on the other side
>     of the DMZ (ie outside the firewall).
>
>     Why you would set up a 'web server' that wasn't exposed to the web
>     I'm not sure I understand. Was the server intended just to run
>     your Intranet??
>
>     It's a fairly simple operation to open up a port to accommodate
>     this, your ISP will be able to assist.
>
>     Obviously this being the case you will need to lock down your
>     security on the server well, eg if you are using Apache2 then link
>     it's login creds to your active directory (there is heaps on
>     google and Apache's own site on how to do this) and keep Apache
>     update etc etc. your Techs should be conversant with protocols for
>     the security of web servers
>
>     You should then have no difficulty FTPing to the server. If you
>     are using a Linux based server it is probably advisable to create
>     an FTP user and lock down the permissions on the folder you serve
>     the web page from (var/www in Linux by default) to only allow ftp
>     to that user.
>
>     In terms of other ways to access the server there are quite a few,
>     the most common are SSH and VNC. SSH is a command line based
>     access protocol and VNC is a remote desktop type session but
>     neither of these are particularly suited to transferring large
>     numbers of files from an outside source. Personally I use
>     Filezilla for ftp and have no problems.
>
>     Anyhow my 2 cents if I've understood right, hope this helps.
>
>     Regards
>
>     Brett Groves
>
>     On 19/07/10 21:31, George Ciotti wrote:
>
>         FTP to school internal server...? Hi,
>
>         We are currently updating our website and we need to be able
>         to access the server from outside the school's internal
>         network via FTP or some other way. Our techies are saying it
>         is very difficult to do due to the fact that the department
>         has a particular firewall which disallows this to occur. Our
>         IT manager has attempted to use SRAS School client to no avail
>         at this stage.
>         Is there anyone out there that is currently able to FTP to
>         their internal server from outside of the school? Is there
>         another method? Or does someone know who there is to contact
>         from the department regarding this matter?
>         Any help and advice would be appreciated.
>
>         Cheers
>         George Ciotti
>         -->
>         The University High School
>         77 Story Street, Parkville, Vic, 3052, Australia
>         Ph: (03) 9347 2022
>         mobile: 0412934782
>
>
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