[Nottingham] Configuring a basic web/FTp server

[Robert Hart]

On Wed, 2005-10-12 at 12:28 +0100, Graham Greenwood wrote:
> Hi All,
>        I am currently at college which of course is a Microsoft house but I 
> would like to be able to backup my college work via the internet.  I was 
> considering using proftp but on all the guides I have read it recommends 
> configuring a seperate user for FTP and I was hoping to be sync my college 
> work with a similar directory structure in my home folder.  In doing this do 
> expose my to any more security concerns than I would using a special FTP 
> account.

FTP has a bit of a bad reputation, (although not as bad as telnet), so
I'd be cautious if I were you. I don't think this is paranoia anymore, I
regularly (as in several times a day) get people connecting to ssh and
VNC on my boxes (which are the only things the uni firewall allows in)
so I wouldn't trust anything without a very good track record.

The only advantage of FTP is that a basic client is installed on windows
by default. I would stash a copy of putty and it's scp (pscp?) in your
uni network drive and use that instead if you can.

> We also do some basic web development on this course and I would like to 
> experiment on running my own web server but I only have a standard ntl 
> broadband connections, as in DHCP, are there any services that work like 
> DynaDNS for windows avaible for linux which are compatiable with 
> firestarter.
> 
> Any help would be much appreciated

In my experience, NTL IP addresses didn't change all that much, unless
you disconnected for a long time (like a whole weekend!!), so if it's
just to play you could use the numeric IP, or I think you can use
something like DynaDNS and manually update it on the rare occassion a
change occurs. 

Rob
-- 
Robert Hart <enxrah at nottingham.ac.uk>
University of Nottingham


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