[geeks] ftp upload renaming

[Patrick Giagnocavo]

On Sep 14, 2006, at 10:25 PM, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:

> I have a client who wants users to be able to stage new documents to a
> UNIX server that processes documents.  The processing involves moving
> a document into the right place, reading it and putting parts of it in 
> a
> database, etc.
>

I think FTP is the wrong answer. Instead use HTTP/HTTPS and configure 
the server to have a large maxinput (or whatever the config file 
setting is) parameter.

Then, use PHP/TCL/Perl/C/whatever to do the rest.  There are even 
several file upload scripts out there right now.
> 	- the client program which the users have must be fairly easy to
> 	  use, so that limits it to fairly common ftp, GUI scp, and other
> 	  system->system copy programs

Web GUI is easiest, and you can easily secure it with SSL.

> 	- the client needs to be able to run on MacOS X and Windows

Make sure it works in Safari, IE, FireFox.

> 	- the limits on file sizes needs to be very high since the documents
> 	  can be large
>

Remember that FTP is not firewall-friendly.  You may have users at the 
end of Internet connections run by people who are not clueful.

--Patrick