server side apache Q - apache

i have a page with sstv (slow scan TV) jpg images, 12 of them in a table..they change as the ham operators send the sstv.. my question ..how can i set the images named 1.jpg - 12.jpg to be downloadable in a zip file via a download link ..the zipping would need to occur server side when the download link is clicked..is that possible? ...... or.. how can i add a download link under each individual image if the complete 12 zipped up isnt possible?
thanks for any help... i have tried .htaccess to make the images themselves downloadable and could not get it to work, it broke the complete page when i did i think because i use htaccess to password protect the site for a group of club members...

Zipping the files up every time someone clicks the download link would probably be costly in terms of server-side processing. If you still want to do it, I would suggest writing a dynamic script in something such as PHP to handle doing it.
However, what I would suggest is writing a short cron script (Windows Scheduled Task if you're on a Windows box) to periodically zip up the files to a predetermined filename and location. For example, a simple cron entry might look like:
15 * * * * zip /path/to/downloadfile.zip /path/to/zip/images >/dev/nul
Use crontab -e to edit your crontab (or sudo crontab -e to edit the root crontab). Then put a link to the downloadfile.zip to let people download it. Yes, it's generated every 15 minutes (feel free to tweak the timing) instead of on demand, but that's generally better to give you consistent server performance.
If you absolutely must have it generated on demand, look into, for example, PHP's Zip library of functions to do the actual compression, and something like tempnam to allow you to save the file to a guaranteed unique temporary filename and server it to your client.

Related

Automatically add database entry after ftp upload

Sorry if this seems stupid but I wonder if it's possible to add a database entry after an ftp upload.
To be more clear, thanks to winSCP I have several folders sending everything I put in there automatically to my server.
However, I would like to create a mysql entry for each uploaded files and once again, automatically. Is it possible to do that? How?
To gives the full details of what I need to do, you can read the following.
I have several folders with pictures and each folders are uploaded automatically.
Each of those folders belong to one user and the goal is to give them an account and allow them to see and download those files through a web interface. Since one account = one folder, that's kinda easy.
And I think a simple .htaccess can simply secure things so one user can only see and download the file in his own repository, no?
However if I want them to be able to see what's new (=something they didn't download or simply mark as read) I think I need a table to manage those files.
Something like id | file (string) | read (bool).
If you think this way to proceed is bad, they I'm open to change how to do things, but to be clear uploading the file need to work this way. Not using any kind of formulary.
Thanks for reading that, sorry for my english.
Your problem contains three steps:
Folders/Files been automatically uploaded to your server directory, as you say, this been efficiently handled by winSCP.
You need to update your database with all the files and folders present in your server directory.
You need to update whether or not it is been read/downloaded by the user.
Since your first step is in place, we don't need anything there. For second step, you should write a script and schedule that script to run at a fixed time interval using CRON (if using LINUX or UNIX, or WINDOWS). The script would be responsible to create a list of file(s) present in the directory, and simply insert the file(s) information that are not present in your database.
EDIT:
This edit is to describe how your script file should work. As I explained, the cron jobs would simply help you run your script file in fixed set of interval (which can be every minute, or every hour, or every day, and so on). Lets say your database table has following columns:
fileid (varchar[20])
filepath (varchar[20])
status (boolean)
Your script file should do following things:
Create a list of existing filepaths in your server directory
Run a select query, create a list of existing filepaths from database table.
Compare list1 with list2, and find the ones that doesn't exist in list2 (This would give you a list of filepath that needs to be inserted into table)
Just insert the list of file paths you got above, and set there status to be false (which means the file is not read/downloaded yet)
NOTE: Please keep in mind that I am not advising right now that how your database table should look like. It can be what you have proposed or can even differ depending on your will or requirements.
For the third step, simply keep the status of your file to be unread when creating entries in your table from the second step, and then when user click on the file link in your application whether to view or download it, send a POST request to your server updating the file status to be marked as read.
Let me know if this helps!

Extracting large zip file onto server while pc is turned off

I've got a zip file of 1,6gb and it takes me forever to extract it on a server. I left it all night long and when i woke up it wasn't finished. There is no way to keep track how much time is left on extracting a file and how much percantage is done so i'm not sure if the whole thing works properly. Is there a way to exctract that file using File manager in Cpanel so that it can be done while the pc is off and maybe to note me on an email when it's done. I basically need to copy a webshop from live server to developers server and am just loosing too much time on that. So if anyone has a better idea how to extract it please feel free to suggest it.
P.S. Deleting of those files that did extract takes forever too
P.P.S. I'm a linux/SystemAdmin
If it's all about copying files from one server to another - why not just use rsync and avoid archiving?
I mean, if extraction is a pain - remove it from the equation :)
It is not a good ideato use the cPanel File Manager for this task, as the server will probably kill the extract process if it takes too long.
The best way to go about this would be via SSH, while logged in as root. If you need to switch off your computer, you should run it in screen.
You can also use unzipper.php which you can get from github.
It will require you to upload your file and unzipper.php too. Then run wwww.yourdomain.con/unzipper.php

Is there an automated way to push all my javascript/css/images to s3 everytime I do a website push?

So I am in the process of moving all the thumbnails of my major sites to S3 and now I am thinking about how I can consistently put all my CSS/JS/images that power the actual sites to it. It's easy enough to upload everything the first time but I am trying to think of a way to somehow automate the process everytime I push out to production.
Does anyone have any clever ways of doing this?
I used to use s3sync to compare and update the assets just before upload the site files using a bash file to iterate through my files
This works well but when the amount of likes to compare (lets say thousands) gets big this process start being really slow. If you have an small architecture (in term of assets) this would do the trick
to make this better I would recommend capistrano or some other assistant that helps you to deploy...this way you can run at all once..
upload assets
deploy your files
In the other hand you could take a look to cloudfront (amazon's CDN) and set it up using ORIGIN..this way you dont need to worry about upload the files to s3 since they will be automatically pulled on demand. The down side of this approach is the caching if you need to update a file and keep the same name (AKA expire the object)...you can do this in cloudfront but will need an script to do the task.
Depending in the traffic (and other factors, ofcourse) one or other path will fit the best.

How can I determine if files in a "drop folder" are completely transfered

Remote clients will upload images (and perhaps some instructional files in specially formatted text) to a "drop folder." Once the upload is complete we need to begin processing these images. It would be an easy, but flawed, solution to just have a script automatically begin processing any files in the folder every few seconds (the files can be move out of the folder once processed); but problems would arise when attempting to process large images which are only partially transfered.
What are some tricks I can use to ensure the files are fully uploaded before processing them?
A few of my own thoughts:
The script can check the validity of the file; ie, a partial jpeg would result in an error and you could respond to that error in the script, this would be fairly CPU intensive though. Some files have special markers on the end, but I can't count on this, I'm not sure what formats I'll be dealing with.
I've heard of "file handles" but haven't really figured out the basics of what they are and how I can tell if there is a "file handle" on a particular file. Basically the FTP daemon (actually, I'm on Windows, so "service") would keep a "handle" on the file while it's being uploaded and you would know not to process that file. These are just a few of my thoughts but I'm not really sure if they will work or if there are better or more accepted ways of solving this problem.
If you have an server-side script upload system (PHP, ASP, JSP, whatever), you could instruct the script to call another script to process the files, or to create a flag-file indicating the upload is done, something like this.
If your server is Linux-based, you can use lsof to check if the file is open. As your ftp/script/cgi will close the file after upload completes, lsof will not show the file in the list.
If your server is Windows-based, you can use Process Explorer to list the open files.
By what method are your users uploading the images?

How do i force a file to be deleted? Windows server 2008

On my site a user may upload a file (pic, zip, audio, video, whatever). He then may decide to replace it with a newer revision. This user may upload a file, make a post then decide to put up a new revision replacing the old (lets say its a large zip or tar.gz file). Theres a good chance people may be downloading it if he sent out an email or even im for the home user.
Problem. I need to replace the file and people may be downloading and it may be some minutes before it is deleted. I dont want my code to stall until i cant delete or check every second to see if its unused (especially bad if another user can start and he takes long creating a cycle).
How do i delete the file while users are downloading the file? i dont care if they stop i just care that the file can be replaced and new downloads are the new revision.
What about referencing the files indirectly?
A mapping script, maps a virtual file entry from your site to a real file . If the user wants to upload a new revision of his file you just update the mapping, not the real file.
You can install a daily task that scans all files and deletes all files without a mapping and without open connections.
lajuette's answer is right, the easiest solution is to work around the file locking altogether:
When a user uploads file foo.zip, internally store it as foo-v1.zip.
Create a mapping file somewhere (database, code, whatever) that maps foo.zip to foo-v1.zip.
Rather than exposing a direct link to the file, expose a link to a service that gets the file: mysite.com/Download?foo.zip or something. This service uses the mapping to determine which version of the file to send to the client.
When a new version is uploaded, create foo-v2.zip and update the mapping file.
It wouldn't be that hard to write a scheduled task that cleans up old, un-mapped files.
If your oppose to a database and If the filenames are in a fix format (such as user/id.ext) you could append the id with a revision number and enumerate the folder using a pattern (user/id-*) and use the latest revision.