FTP Index - Readme

What is this?

This toolsuite allows you to add ftp-servers, index them recursivly and search the results with a webinterface. It is designed for private uses only and is still in an early (and ugly) beta-phase.
It utilizes the ftpls tool from the ftpcopy package by Uwe Ohse (see http://www.ohse.de/uwe/ftpcopy.html or get it directly from FTP at ftp://www.ohse.de/uwe/ftpcopy/). Your first step should be to download the ftpcopy package and compile it.

Installation

Untar the source-package and copy all the code to a directory beyond your webserver root and make sure CGIs are executed from that location. Create a new mySQL-Database with the included script database.sql. Then edit the config.pl to your needs. Change your /etc/crontab to run the indexer.pl every day (or whatever you like). Point your webbrowser to the ftpindex dir and enter a new server.

Adding a server

For adding a servers simply click on the add servers link and enter the servers (one per line) into the textarea.
If a server is unreachable or ftpls can not login - the server will be deleted from the database.
You can also scan a website for ftp-links by hitting Fetch servers from website and entering an URL.

Search

The search is very primitive, yet. All searchwords are combined by a logically AND. No Paraphrases or more complicated boolean algebra is supported. The search is caseinsensitive.
If you encounter that a server isn't working anymore, you can remove it by hitting the DEL link on the left.

Customizing

This is a very quick hack (the main features were built in a night) to fulfill my needs. If you find this useful and make some changes you think I would like - send 'em to me (a.gohr@web.de). For customizing the design (yes I know its ugly) edit the header($) function in config.pl

Known Bugs, missing features

The source is spagetticode right now ;-) At least the indexer should be splitted into some functions instead of that big main routine
If the password or username contains weird chars the shell will complain about wrong parameters or stuff like that - a s// at the right place should help but I'm to lazy ;-)
Maybe there are more situations with special chars - I used quotemeta() as much as possible, but some things seem to get through
I want to sort files after filetype - so you can start a search for video files only for example
Instead of removing non connectable servers directly they should be retried in a few hours/days
It seems that the indexer hangs sometimes - I haven't figured out when and why...
Much more undiscovered mysteries ;-)

Copyleft

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA