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====== EXtplorer: online file manager ======


For many, cloud computing means being able to access your data and software from anywhere you happen to be through the Internet. I've written several times in this column that cloud computing is great... but only as long as it happens in your cloud, that is in (Free!) software environments that you control and that you can move wherever you want. I already explained, in a previous post, how to put in such a personal cloud your bookmarks. This time, I'll show you one of the simplest possible ways to manage your own files (and those of your friends, family or coworkers!) in the cloud.
eXtplorer is a Free Software application that works inside any graphical browser as a simple file manager on any website where you decide to run it. It's not really full featured nor terribly fast, but it has all the basics and will run pretty much everywhere: its only requirements are a folder on a Web hosting account that supports PHP (at least version 4.3!) and any browser with JavaScript enabled.

As you can see in Figure A, EXtplorer provides a very clean interface (the screenshots here are from version 2.1.0) in which you can:
create folders
move files and folders by drag and drop
run searches with regular expressions
sort files by any column shown in the main pane
download many files as one compressed archive
upload archives and expand them on the server

{{ :linux:figure_1_extplorer_main.png |}}
Figure A

The installation procedure is very simple. It's just not documented completely, but don't worry! I'll show you exactly how to do it, after telling you what I like the most in eXtplorer.

To begin with, there are several classes of users or, more exactly, permissions. Administrators configure eXtplorer and can create other users. Should you need to add many accounts at once, you may do it automatically with a script.

Each user can have a different "home" directory, completely invisible, if you so wish, to all other ordinary users. Figure B shows that the "root" folder for the "friends" user in Konqueror is different from the "root" of the eXtplorer administrator in the Firefox window.
{{ :linux:figure_2_extplorer_user_vs_admin.png |}}
Figure B



You may even control which files each user sees through regular expressions (see Figure C).
{{ :linux:figure_3_extplorer_user_management.png |}}
Figure C



In general you can let a user view files and folders, but not create or modify them, and forbid him to change his own password. One problem with all these "permissions" is that they have meaning only inside eXtplorer, which at the file system level has the same permissions of the account running the Web Server (let's call that account "www").

This may confuse users who already have an FTP account on the same computer. What if John usually puts his files via FTP in a folder like /home/john, that only the system user "john" can access? In such a case, John won't see his files when he logs in as "john" on the eXtplorer page: the operating system will refuse that request, because it comes from "www", not the only "john" it knows about. Luckily, eXtplorer can handle these situations by switching to an FTP mode (top right corner of Figure A) in which users can work with their actual FTP accounts.
The other thing that I like in eXtplorer are bookmarks. When you click on the little star in the top central part of the window, eXtplorer will ask you an alias for the current directory and then jump to it whenever you select that alias from the bookmark drop-down menu.

How to install and configure eXtplorer
The installation of eXtplorer is very simple. Download the latest zip archive, unpack it in a dedicated subfolder (that we'll call $eXtplorer for simplicity) of your Web space and point your browser to www.yourwebsite.com/$eXtplorer to configure the program. That's where problems start (if you haven't read this post, of course!)
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