How to allow folder access? (.htaccess, Require all granted)

Watchduck

I can access a file in a folder: http://paste.watchduck.net/1602/intpart/A194602_thin.html

But I can not access the folders themselves: http://paste.watchduck.net/

On Webfaction this worked, and I think the trick was just to put an .htaccess file with Require all granted in the root folder. But on Opalstack it does not work. Can you please tell me, how to allow this?

sean

You can enable directory listings with the following in .htaccess:

IndexOptions SuppressIcon
Options +Indexes

The SuppressIcon bit is in there because the Apache directory listing icons are currently broken on our setup. This unfortunately turns the listings into name only, so if you need the extra file info then take out the SuppressIcon line.

If you want the icons to work, then you can create an "icons" directory in the root of your app directory and copy whatever icons you need from http://www.apache.org/icons/ into that directory.

Note that these steps will enable directory listings for subdirectories of your app directory, but not for the top level of the app directory itself.

At this time we don't have a way to enable listings at the top level.

We hope to have this working better in a future update to the platform.

Watchduck

I have that .htaccess file in the root folder of the paste app. (So in FileZilla I see it on the same level as the folder 1602 seen in the link.) Is that correct? Until now the behavior has not changed.

sean

If paste is the name of the PHP+Apache app that you're serving at the root of your site then the file to edit (ie to include the directives I mentioned) is /home/shelluser/apps/paste/.htaccess.

This isn't a problem you can solve with mod_access or mod_authz directives, rather it's a side effect of the way we rewrite requests to PHP for those apps. We don't have a way to override that behavior on the managed stack at this time, but I'll mention this conversation on the internal ticket we've got going for improving directory listings for static and PHP apps.

In the meantime, a couple of possible workarounds are:

Use a PHP script to handle the directory listing for you, for example something like https://github.com/halgatewood/file-directory-list/

That's not an actual endorsement, just the first example I found. That said, I tried it and it seems nice 🙂
Run a private backend stack with whatever webserver configuration you want.

Hope this helps!

Watchduck

Turns out I did not yet change it on the server, because I can not log in with FileZilla.

Status:	Resolving address of opal9.opalstack.com
Status:	Connecting to 78.159.101.157:21...
Error:	Connection timed out after 20 seconds of inactivity
Error:	Could not connect to server

Is everything normal on your side? The user created at https://my.opalstack.com/users/ works for SSH, but not for FTP. But I think it used to.

sean

Watchduck what @igor said: unsecured FTP on port 21 is not supported at Opalstack. Please use SFTP instead.

igor

You should try SFTP not FTP.

Watchduck

@sean I have changed nothing since that last post, but now the page I have mentioned above is just gone: http://paste.watchduck.net/1602/intpart/A194602_thin.html Can you see since when and why?

I just logged in with SFTP (really just port 22 instead of 21), and find my apps folder empty.

sean

Watchduck you don't have any apps routed to your paste.watchduck.net site at this time.

To correct this: edit your site to route whichever app to /.

If you inadvertently deleted your app and need it restored then please email support for assistance.

Watchduck SFTP (really just port 22 instead of 21)

It's a bit more than that - FTP on port 21 is an insecure protocol. FTP does everything with zero encryption so all of your activity is potentially including your authentication credentials, your file contents, etc are sent over the network unprotected. SFTP encrypts everything via the SSH protocol, so it doesn't have this problem.

Watchduck

I would like to know, why I don't seem to have any apps in the first place. I last looked a month ago, and then the site still worked. I can find no logs beyond the notice log.

sean

Watchduck will follow up on this via your support ticket.

Watchduck

It's a bit more than that

Sure. I just meant, that doing it boiled down to entering port 22 instead of 21 in FileZilla.