General information
Basic configuration
Accounts setup
Advanced configuration
Allright,
what's so special about zFTPServer... aren't there enough
FTP servers out there?
Yes, now there is.
zFTPServer is a fast and powerful FTP server with a lot of
interesting and usefull features:
- Virtual filesystem:
Possible to mount any disk drive or directories anywhere within the
home directory of a user or group, thus making it a breeze to merge directories.
- SSL/TLS support:
Very strong encryption support (up to 256 bits AES).
- Automatic updates: The
server will update automatically (or just notify) when a new version is available
(optional).
- Scripting friendly:
The server can be controlled through a standard TCP/IP connection, making scripts very easy to develop (e.g. creating new accounts through php).
- Remote administration:
The
server and graphical user interface is separated which easily enables
remote
maintenance of the server.
- UTF-8:
The server can switch to UTF-8 mode to allow special (multibyte) characters.
- Being a system service:
Built in WindowsNT / 2000 / XP / 2003 service support.
- Ultrafast transfer speed:
More than 11MByte/sec. average on 100MBit LAN, outperformes most of the
"famous" windows ftp servers.
- Passive mode host / ip option:
Ability to specify a host name for a server with dynamic ip adress to
use in passive mode, e.g. myserver.no-ip.com
- Powerful user and group account
management: Users and Groups may join multiple number of groups
simultaneously.
- Support for upload balancing:
With the virtual filesystem users' uploads may end up where there is
space.
- Advanced IP-Access management:
Access rights with respect to ip adresses or domain names may be specified,
granting or denying access from specific locations.
- Advanced Account expiration:
Accounts can be expired after a specific criteria has been fullfilled.
Criterias include expiration after a specific date, after a specified number
of days/weeks/months has passed, number of downloads performed and more.
- Anti-Hammering:
The server can automatically detect and block multiple attempts to connect that for instance try to brute force passwords.
- Multiple language interface:
zFTPServer Suite is currently available in English, Swedish, Italian, German, French, Portuguese, Slovak, Hungarian, Traditional Chinese (Taiwan) and Simplified Chinese (P.R.C.).
- It's FREE!!!
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Ok, maybe I
need this one... How do I get started?
It's very simple:
- Download "zFTPServer Suite Setup.exe" and start the installation
process.
- There are not many details to worry about during the
installation, you should be fine with the default options but feel free
to change anything.
- Finish the installation process and start the programs at the
end of the installation.
- When the installation is finished you should have two programs
installed on your computer: "zFTPServer" and "zFTPServer
Administration".
- Using zFTPServer Administration you may now 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.
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Why are there
two programs, Server and Adminstration?
The advantage with this is that the Administration could be done
from any machine capable of connecting to the Server using TCP/IP. I.e.
this is to enable remote administration of the server.
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Why are there
so little configuration options?
Well, zFTPServer Suite is designed to be easy to use and maintain.
If you want however, you may activate the advanced settings in the main
menu under "Setup".
Note that even if the advanced settings is hidden they still apply,
they will just not be visible in the graphical user interface (this may
e.g. be used to prevent accidental change of certain critical settings).
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I have
configured the server to listen on port 8888, why can't
Administration connect to the Server?
The port you specify is only for other users to connect to, the
Administration program should always connect to port 3145 (unless you
have specified otherwise in e.g. your firewall).
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How do I
enable anonymous access to my server?
First you must enable anonymous access, by default this is disabled
for security reasons. With "Show advanced settings" activated you will
find this security setting within the general settings of the server.
Then you simply add an ordinary user account with the username "anonymous"
without a password. Leaving the password blank tells the server to accept
anything as password for this account. Any other special configurations
are just as with every other user account.
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What does
"Administrator account" mean?
If an account has administrative privileges it may be used to manage
the server with the administration program. Normally only system
administrators have this privilege.
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How do I
construct the home directory for users?
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.
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"New Folder" and
"Add Resource", what's the difference?
"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.
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I have
installed the server as a system service but I cannot add
any network paths as resources, what should I do?
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).
- Right-click on "My Computer"
- Select "Manage"
- Double-click on "Services and Applications"
- Click on "Services"
- Find "zFTPServer" in the right pane and double-click on it
- On the tab "Log On" you specify which account the program should
run as
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Why should I
add more than one resource to a users' Folder?
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.
Example:
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)
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Why can't I remove some
resources and folders?
The resources and folders that are in bold face are inherited from a group
membership. You cannot remove resources and folders a user gets from a group
membership.
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My Server is
behind a firewall, what should I do?
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).
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I have a
www-proxy blocking outgoing calls, how do I use
Administration?
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 intervalls (every 2 seconds)).
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What is "Spy User"?
With this feature you may watch what a particular user is doing on
your server. "Spy User" will bring up another window where only that
particular user will be logged.
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When do the programs
auto-update?
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 versions every midnight.
When a new version is found it is automatically downloaded.
The update will be performed when
... the program has been idle for 1
hour.
... the user manually trigger the
update by clicking on the yellow
star, which is visible once there is an update available.
... there are no users connected to the
server.
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Allright, this
is to simple... I want some challenge!
Ok, then maybe you want to experiment with the various tokens that
may be used when specifying access rights for users.
The following tokens are available and will be replaced by their
respective value where ever they are found in paths:
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.
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