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Archive for November 2009
Get Out Of Jail
Naturally you don’t want any tom, dick or harry with an FTP account trampling all over the system files on your web server, even if they don’t have sufficient access privileges to do any damage. So when all is as it should be, your FTP users are restricted to the directory you specify as their “home”. By default FTP accounts are locked into a “CHROOT jail“.
But sometimes you want to give a particular FTP account (e.g. the system administrator) broad access without requiring that they log in as root. So how do you break them out of jail?
As is often the case with Linux - it’s easy once you know how. As long as you do it correctly. Simply create a new directory in the user’s home directory. This directory can then be bound to the directory you wish the user to have access to so that it becomes a mount point for the subordinate file system.
So as an example, if you had a user admin whose home directory was at /home/admin, and you want the admin user to have access to /var then just follow the following simple steps.
- Create a new directory in admin’s home to server as the mount point, e.g. mkdir /home/admin/var.
- Bind the new entry point to the desired point in the file system, e.g. mount --bind /var /home/admin/var.
- Job’s a good ’un!
Again, of course, as is often the case with Linux “thar be dragons!” Should you decide the mount point in the user’s home directory is no longer required and you delete it, then I am reliably informed that the subordinate file system to which is mapped will be deleted too. The filesystem should be unmounted first using the umount command. It is also important to remember that when passing the directory paths to the mount command, the path to the filesystem precedes the path to the desired entry point. Get them the wrong way around and the file system disappears up its own wotsit - a situation that can be remedied by a server reboot (once the blind panic has subsided).
If you do want the mount to persist after reboot then that requires a modification to the etc/fstab file. But that’s a topic for another day.
Subscribe »Why Do We have A Blog?
There are several very good reasons why we have incorporated a blog into our web site. It’s relatively simple to do after all.
- A blog is great tool for quickly adding new content to a web site. We chose WordPress, and its ease of use means we are more likely to keep updating the site on a regular basis, whenever one of us has ten minutes to spare.
- Visitors like fresh content. Keeping the site updated will encourage people to come back again and again. It all helps when building an online presence and winning customer mindshare.
- Search engines like fresh content too. As long as we keep it relevant it all counts towards ratings.
- We’re creative types, and blogging is form of self-expression. When we’ve got something to say it won’t do to bottle it up.
- We’re good at what we do, and blogging about it is way of proving it to the world.
It all makes sense doesn’t it. Perhaps you should have a blog on your web site. Don’t think about it for too long though - give us a call…