[NCLUG] Building a linux based file exchange portal?

[Marcio Luis Teixeira]

I'ld like to thank everyone for the replies!

What I get from the responses is that there really isn't a ready-made solution in open-source land and I shouldn't be ashamed to consider one of the commercial offerings out there. That said, I've been playing around with JSCAPE Secure FTP Server and it seems be a good solution:

  http://www.jscape.com/secureftpserver

It's a Java-based product which has a nice Swing administration interface. They have different editions available, which makes it easy to try-before-you-buy (looks like you can even use the evaluation pro edition for free if you don't mind having a limit of one session at a time). It presents to users a nice and simple web interface with the ability to send e-mail links of files to others. You can optionally make certain users administrators so that they can add other users to the server themselves. I was able to get it installed on Fedora 10 in only a few minutes with minor tweakage. The only issue is that it does not seem to run with the OpenSDK version of Java which ships with Fedora, but worked fine when I downloaded a JRE from Sun. Then it was simply a matter of noticing that the JSCAPE startup scripts have a INSTALL4J_JAVA_HOME_OVERRIDE variable that can be tweaked to point to a particular JVM.

JSCAPE is a totally self-contained Java package. It doesn't necessarily run "on linux" per se, or make use of apache or anything, but basically runs on any OS that supports Java. That makes me happy, as essentially it gives me one more layer of sandboxing between would be hackers and my network. I'm thinking I'll plop this on a Linux host in the DMZ and give it a whirl.

-- Marcio


PS: I am not ignoring the other suggestions. They just didn't hit the spot for this particular need. However, some of the things mentioned were indeed interesting and I'll have to play around with them! (I've actually been contemplating using FreeNAS as an iSCSI target for VMware ESX for some time now).




----- Original Message ----
> From: Marcio Luis Teixeira <marciot at yahoo.com>
> To: nclug at nclug.org
> Sent: Tuesday, September 22, 2009 7:47:50 AM
> Subject: [NCLUG] Building a linux based file exchange portal?
> 
> 
> 
> Hi everyone,
> 
> Our company has a need for some sort of server where internal employees can 
> upload files and make them available to clients, or vice versa. In the past, 
> this has been done simply by having a Linux box in the DMZ where both the 
> internal employees and external users can use "sftp/ssh" to exchange files.
> 
> This is sort of clumsy for several reasons. First, I doubt it is very secure, 
> since once you have an SSH session to a box, you can do just about anything. But 
> secondly, and most important in my view, is that it is a pain to administer. I 
> have to manage accounts for both the internal users as well as adding accounts 
> for external users. In addition to that, because we want only certain IP 
> addresses to have access, I have to manage that as well. Since I'm the only one 
> who can do this, of course users must come to me whenever they want to exchange 
> files with someone new.
> 
> So I've been looking for a better solution. In an ideal world, there would be 
> some self-managing web portal sort of thing, where internal users could use 
> their browser to upload files, then configure individual accounts for external 
> users which would have access to those files. Alternatively, they simply upload 
> files and assign to it a unique password which they then share to only the users 
> they want to have access. So far I've been unable to locate anything like that 
> (in part, because I do not know what keywords to search for that will not give 
> me a bunch of unrelated stuff).
> 
> In lieu of custom software, I've contemplated several generic solutions to this 
> problem, none of them all that attractive. I could set up an apache web server, 
> and give internal users access to that box, and have them share files off their 
> http home using ".htaccess" for access control, but that's sort of technical and 
> doesn't easily (I think) allow for uploads from clients. Or I could set up 
> anonymous ftp and force our people to use encryption on their files, but that's 
> very risky, especially if I allow uploads (I'll be hosting an unintentional 
> warez site in the blink of an eye).
> 
> So, better ideas would be appreciated, thanks!
> 
> -- Marcio
> 
> 
>       
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