CHMOD

ok, im kinda new to this, so correct me if im wrong.

I want all types of users to view and download files a particular folder in my hosted server (which i have full read and write ftp access to). I do not want other users them to be able to view other files in parent directories. I think that the CHMOD will do this for me.

When i right click on the folder ("maps") and click on properties/CHMOD, i then can set properties. I set the permissions of the following number: 754. I click ok, and get this message:

[codebox][19:06:28] SITE CHMOD 754 Maps
[19:06:28] 500 'SITE CHMOD 754 Maps': command not understood[/codebox]

Your FTP server doesn't support CHMOD. If this FTP server is running on Windows CHMOD is probably not required.

Regards,
-Mat

Your FTP server doesn't support CHMOD. If this FTP server is running on Windows CHMOD is probably not required.

Regards,
-Mat

Thanks for your help. The server i have is running Windows NT. What other way could i do this if other than CHMOD? All i really need is a list of files in a particular directory, and the ability to download these files by clicking on the name of them. Reasonable security also required (eg by not being able to view files in the parent directory by clicking the link provided in most browsers).

P.S i actually do think the server supports CHMOD, but i am not sure. Emailing now.

If the server is running under Windows, it certainly does *not* support CHMOD. Originally, CHMOD is the command line tool under UNIX to set access rights. As access rights under Windows differ significantly from those under Unix, CHMOD simply does not apply to Windows. The way Windows FTP servers handle the CHMOD command differs from server to server: Either they issue an error like in your case, or they "swallow" the command, pretending to execute it, but if you do a refresh on the directory contents you will see that actually nothing has changed. So you can just skip CHMOD'ding your files, it will either not work or simply do nothing.

Is there a way, on a server running Windows NT to allow a certain part of the ftp site to be accessed, while restricted on all other directories, if not by the CHMOD feature?

Sure. If you're using IIS, you can just create regular local Windows users and set the rights for the users and files in Windows Explorer, just if the users were local users. IIS will adhere to the filesystem access rights. Other servers, like FileZilla Server, come with their own rights management. So it depends on your server software how this could be done. Please refer to its documentation, this is beyond the scope of SmartFTP support.