Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

zFTPServer is a fast and powerful yet simple to use FTP server with lots of fascinating and practical features:

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Download and install the program:

• Installation instructions
• When installation is complete use the zFTPServer Administration tool to configure your FTP-server.
  • A good start is to configure basic settings of the server first and then move on to configuring the accounts. Remember to use groups to simplify management of several users which have a similar setup.
  
  

With a separate tool you gain the advantage of remote Administration, i.e. you can administrate your FTP server from any computer using TCP/IP. Also, resources needed to run the graphical interface need not be run at all times; minimizing server footprint.

The port you specify is only used for client connections, the Administration program should always connect to port 3145 (unless you have specified otherwise in e.g. your firewall).

To use anonymous access you must specifically tell the server to allow anything as password for a particular account. Simply add an ordinary user account with the username "anonymous" and uncheck the box "Require password". Any other special configurations are done in the same way as with every other user account.

Administrator accounts have administrative privileges, which means it may be used to manage the server with the administration program (normally only system administrators have this privilege).

You may see the "Home Directory" as a file tree, with the root on top. Simply add folders to the tree in order to build the users file tree (as seen when the user connects to your server). Directories and files from resources will be added into the file tree as requested.

"New Folder" will create a virtual folder on the users' file tree, allowing you to build the home directory as you like. "Add Resource" will add directories and files at the location where it is placed in the file tree.

When a system service is installed the default in Windows is to run that program as "LocalSystem" account. What you need to do is to change the user that the program is running as in order to give the program access to e.g. network paths (a good choice is to use "Administrator" for the zFTPServer service).

1. Right-click on "My Computer"
2. Select "Manage"
3. Double-click on "Services and Applications"
4. Click on "Services
5. Find "zFTPServer" in the right pane and double-click on it
6. On the tab "Log On" you specify which account the program should run

If you have data in several folders on your harddrives that actually should be seen as one folder, you may create a virtual file system by adding more resources to the same folder. This will be seen as one big folder for the users connecting to your server.

Examples:
You have some pictures stored in one location and another set of pictures stored in another location, then you may add those two locations as "Resources" to a particular "Folder" and then it will seem as all files and subdirectories are in the same folder (for users connecting to your server).

Another useful way of using this feature is for instance by adding an upload resource to some folders, that way users may upload files to, what they see, some folders. However, the files are actually sent to a particular upload folder on the location you specified. When specifying upload folders, it may be usefull to add more than one resource since then the files being uploaded to that folder will physically end up on the resource with the most available space (it will seem as you have a huge upload folder).

If the resources or folders are in bold face it means they are inherited from a group in which the user is a member. You cannot remove resources or folders which a user inherits from a group membership.

First of all you need to configure your firewall to accept incomming connections to the server. Then, if you know your external IP-adress you must enter that in Server configuration. If you do not have a static, real IP-adress you may specify a dns-name for lookup every time your IP-adress is needed (e.g. "myserver.no-ip.com" could be used as an IP-adress).

The Administration program is capable of using simple HTTP-commands for remote administration. Just setup Administration to use the www-proxy and otherwise connect as normal to the Server.
Note:  Performance will not be optimal when connection through a www-proxy (e.g. the update of connected users and what they are doing is only updated at regular intervals (every 2 seconds)).

With this feature you have the ability to observe a particular user's activity on your server. "Spy User" opens a new window which logs all activity of the specified user.

If automatic updates is selected the programs will check for a new version each time they are started. Observe though that Administration will only search for and update Administration, and Server will only search for and update Server. Further, the programs check for new updates every day at midnight.If a new update is available it is automatically downloaded.
Updates are installed automatically when:

• Administration:
  • the program has been idle for 1 hour.
  • the user manually triggers the update by clicking on the yellow star, which is visible once there is an update available.
• Server:
  • there are no users connected to the server

Ok, then maybe you want to experiment with the various tokens that may be used when specifying access rights for users. There are many tokens available that will be replaced by their respective value where ever they are found in paths.

The following tokens are available in the free version:

Token	Value
%USERNAME%	The current user trying to access the resource (e.g. nils)
%YYYY%	The current year in 4-digit format (e.g. 2003)
%MM%	The current month in 2-digit format (e.g. 06)
%DD%	The current day in 2-digit format (e.g. 29)

Using these tokens you may specify directories where access rights depend on e.g. who is accessing the resource or when.
E.g. You may only want to allow uploads in a directory with the current date. Then add a folder to the home directory with e.g. "%YYYY%-%MM%-%DD%". Then any resources accessrights under this one will only apply during the current date.

Depending on your licence you get access to more advanced tools e.g. events can be configured to execute scripts, giving you the power to do anything you can imagine.

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