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Admin tool

Standalone version

F4A now features an admin port, that is a port for an admin tool (GUI) to connect to. The admin tool (GUI) has then control over the server via the FTP4ALL DAEMON PROTOCOL (F4ADP). Check out the admin tool I created, it is Java based and therefor runs under Win & UNIX. I created it under Win using a Java development tool based on Suns JDK 1.1.x.
You need to set the following option in the registry: To run it, get and install Suns JDK 1.1.6 (or later). Be sure to include the current working directory (.) in the CLASSPATH environment variable. Then go to the classes subdir and type java Main. After that, connect to the server on the admin port you specified in the config file (dont use the FTP service port !!!). To login use a valid superuser account. The GUI works well under Windows with JDK 1.1.6 and under Linux with Blackdowns JDK 1.1.7p3 port.
The GUI is now the primary tool for administering f4a. Although the SITE commands still work, I do not guarantee that future features will be accessible with these commands. For now, there is already one feature that cannot be accessed with the GUI only: the user permissions.

Web version

The web version will run in new web browsers (recent 4.x versions of Netscape&MSIE or later). It can be loaded over web from a web server.

Installation

Install and run a web server on the same machine as your FTP4ALL site. Then unpack the archive in a directory under the document root of the web server (directory often named htdocs).

Calling the GUI

Start your browser and load the index.html file from the directory you unpacked the archive to. Be sure to load it over HTTP (e.g. http://your.host.com/f4agui/index.html) and not with the FILE method (e.g. file:/usr/local/httpd/htdocs/f4agui/index.html)

Client requirements

Web browsers must have a 1.1.x based java engine, java enabled and capable of unpacking jar-archives. Therefore, you need a recent 4.x release of Netscape or MSIE. So far, I tested this version only with Netscape 4.51 (Linux version).

Restrictions

There is one security restriction in java that causes problems. This restriction is that java applets may establish TCP connections only to the originating host. This is the host that the applet was loaded from. Therefore, you must run the web server on the same machine as your FTP site. And therefore, you cannot not load the GUI with the FILE method, but only over HTTP.
The mechanism for detecting the originating host is kind of odd. The java runtime system seems to take it from the URL or from the HTTP reply that the server sends. So when you typed the name of the server in the URL, you cannot use the IP address when connecting to the FTP server, because the name and the IP are not the same.
Also it is not possible for the GUI to save the list of connected servers and the window sizes and positions. So when you quit the GUI and run it again later all this information is lost.

Known Bugs

Closing the About dialog, sometimes quits the whole browser. Just don't use the About dialog.