Build a Home FTP Server with FileZilla

Upload and download files on your home PC from anywhere by turning it into a personal FTP server. With a home FTP server, you can upload and download files on your home hard drive from the office, your friend's house, or to your laptop while you're on the road using any FTP client. Setting up an FTP server may sound like a complicated undertaking only system administrators can handle, but it's actually quite easy and free with open source software FileZilla. You've already heard of FileZilla's FTP client application, but the FileZilla project also offers a server application for Windows. Today we'll build an FTP server on your Windows  PC with FileZilla for easy file transfers from any computer.

Install the FileZilla FTP Server

The FileZilla server installation is a regular Windows "just press Next" wizard, and for most users, the suggested default settings will work. However, let's take a look at its initial settings anyway, since they'll affect how you work with your server. Here's how to get FileZilla going:

• Download the FileZilla server application. Even though the FileZilla FTP client is available for multiple operating systems, the server app is Windows-only (and works for Windows XP, Vista and 2000). Download it and kick off the installation wizard. As of this writing, the latest server version is 0.9.25.
• Run the server as a Windows Service. First FileZilla will give you the option of how it should start up: as a Windows service or not, automatically or manually. Windows services are processes that run on your PC which you can manage from the Services management pane. There's more on how to manage that below, but at this point, running FileZilla as a Windows service that runs automatically is the default option. If you want your FTP server on by default, choose "Start as service, started automatically (default)" as shown. Otherwise, choose "Start as service, started manually."

  

  In this pane you'll also set the port for the admin interface to use. By default it's 14147, and you're most likely safe leaving it at that. If you do change that port number, make a note of what it is—you'll need it to connect to the server later on.

• Set the server administrative interface to launch automatically (or not). On the final installation dialog, choose whether you want the server admin window to launch automatically when the current Windows user logs on, when any user logs on, or if it should be started manually.

• Run and connect to the server with the admin interface. As the installation wizard completes, set it to start the server admin interface. This is the window where you'll configure your server and monitor its activity. The first time you run the admin interface, it will ask you for the server's address and port. Since the server is running on your PC—the same one the admin interface is running on—its address is localhost, or 127.0.0.1. The default port is 14147 (or whatever you may have changed it to, as noted above), as shown:

  
  
  
• If this is the only FTP server you'll be administering (most likely it is), check off the "Always connect to this server" box to bypass this dialog in the future.

Create Server Users

If all's gone well, your server's up and running—but no one can use it yet, since you haven't given anyone permission. To set up a server user, from the Edit menu choose Users. In the Users dialog on the right hand side, hit the Add button to create a new user and assign a password. Then, on the left side, select "Shared Folders" to set what folders that user will have access to on your server. Here I've created a user named gina and granted read access to the C:\data\ directory.

Notice you can fine-tune file access rights for each user: grant read-only rights (download only), write rights (to upload files), and whether or not the user can delete files or create directories, too.

If you want to grant several users access to your server all with the same rights and directory access, instead of creating each one individually, set up a user group. For example, if you're sharing your MP3 directory with friends, make a user group called "music fans" with access to the correct directory and add users to that group, which automatically gives them those rights. Then, if you move your music directory you only have to edit the group, not each user in it. To manage user groups, from the Edit menu, choose Groups.

Log into the Server

Now that the server's up and running with users, it's time to log in and try uploading and downloading. Using any FTP client (like the FileZilla client or FireFTP for Firefox) enter the server address, user name and password.

• Server address If you're FTP'ing across your home network (like from your upstairs PC to your bedroom PC), you can reach the server by using its internal network address (most likely something like 192.168.xx.xx.) From the command line, type ipconfig to see what that address is. If you want to log into your FTP server over the internet, set up a memorable URL for it and allow connections from outside your network. To do so, check out how to assign a domain name to your home server and how to access your home server behind a router and firewall.
• User name and password This is one of the users you set up in FileZilla's admin interface, not the server admin user name. If friends, family, and co-workers will be logging into your FTP server, give them each a their specific username and password to log in (along with the server address.)

Use your FTP server to fetch files stored at home from anywhere, share files with friends and family, or back up files across your network. (Free backup software SyncBack supports backup over FTP. Here's more on how to use Syncback.)

A word about security: FTP is not a secure protocol; all the file transfers happen in the clear, which makes them ripe for sniffing. FileZilla does support encrypted FTP access, and we recommend using that or a VPN like Hamachi to secure file transfers over the internet. FileZilla's secure FTP server setup is beyond the scope of this article, but you can go into the server admin interface's settings area to configure it.

Starting and Stopping Your Server in Windows Services

Finally, to shut down or restart your FileZilla server running as a Windows service, from Control Panel, Administrative Tools, launch Services. Right-click on the FileZilla FTP Server item on the list to stop it, edit its Properties, or restart it, as shown.

Other home servers you can set up yourself include a home web server with Apache, a home SSH server with Cygwin and a home VNC server to remote control your computer.

Winternals Administrator's Pak collects multiple enterprise-class utilities in single toolkit

Various tool and utility software suites are available to help information technology professionals administer and recover failed systems. iolo technologies' System Mechanic 6 Mobile Toolkit is one such example. While a competent suite for small business troubleshooters, System Mechanic doesn’t necessarily scale well to enterprise-size environments in which remote administration and Active Directory configuration are often required.

Winternals’ Administrator’s Pak offers enterprise administrators just such a toolset. In addition to offering a wide array of more intensive utilities, the Administrator’s Pak supports numerous remote administration capabilities. However, there’s a price to be paid. Winternals’ Administrator’s Pak’s list price is $1,439, considerably more than System Mechanic 6 (list price $299 on Amazon).

The additional cost will prove wise within enterprise environments, though, as all of the following utilities are included in Winternals’ Administrator Pak 5.0:

• ERD Commander 2005
• Remote Recover
• NTFSDOS Professional
• Crash Analyzer Wizard
• FileRestore
• Filemon Enterprise Edition
• Regmon Enterprise Edition
• Insight for Active Directory
• AD Explorer
• TCP Tools (TCPView Professional and TCPVStat)

Figure A

Winternals’ Administrator’s Pak includes a Navigator menu for accessing its many tools and utilities.

Here’s a quick rundown of each utility.

ERD Commander 2005

Winternals’ ERD Commander 2005 supports creating a bootable CD to simplify system and data recovery. Using an ERD Commander rescue CD, administrators gain access to powerful recovery utilities, including disk management, command line, networking and other tools, on a wide variety of Windows systems (including Windows NT 4.0/2000/XP and Server 2003 platforms).

ERD Commander 2005 works by bypassing the installed operating system and booting to a self-contained graphic interface providing access to the system’s hard drives and configuration settings (including the Windows registry). In addition to powering a Console for processing batch files and other commands, administrators using ERD Commander 2005 benefit from a host of additional tools.

Viewing the Event Log helps determine system, security and application errors that may be fouling a system’s performance. The Hotfix Uninstall Wizard enables undoing Windows service pack, update and hotfixes that may be preventing a system from booting or operating properly. A Locksmith tool, meanwhile, enables changing Administrator and local user passwords, which can prove a lifesaver when locked out of a critical PC or server.

Remote Recover

Remote Recover simplifies recovering data on remote systems or configuring remote systems for new installations. The ability to mount and administer remote system hard disks saves administrators the trouble of having to travel to systems across town or on a different floor when data must be recovered over the network, removing malicious files from a remote system using a local antivirus or antispyware application and more. Remote Recover supports creating bootable CDs and floppy disks, as well as a PXE boot option for systems without an operating CD or floppy drive.

NTFSDOS Professional

Remedying NTFS errors is much easier when you can actually access the NTFS-formatted disk in question. NTFSDOS Professional enables the creation of a boot diskette administrators can use to access and repair NTFS volumes on Windows NT 4.0 and newer operating systems.

Figure B

Several Administrator’s Pak utilities include their own wizards that walk administrators through the process of specifying custom configuration options to be used with a tool.

Besides providing full read and write access to NTFS-formatted volumes, damaged NTFS partitions can be repaired by virtue of NTFSDOS Professional’s ability to boot nonfunctioning NTFS drives and create an environment in which checkdisk, antivirus and third-party recovery programs can be executed.

Crash Analyzer Wizard

Winternals’ Crash Analyzer Wizard interprets Windows crash logs to help determine the cause of system lockups and crashes. The Crash Analyzer works in tandem with Microsoft’s Debugging Tools for Windows to trace errant drivers. The wizard displays not only the driver likely responsible for a system crash, but also a friendly description, the drive’s file location, the publisher and other diagnostic data.

FileRestore

FileRestore provides administrators with a tool that makes quick work of searching for and recovering deleted data from hard disks and other media. Despite being deleted by system applications, processes, users or utilities, many files remain on a hard disk, flash drive or other media. FileRestore offers a solution for searching FAT, FAT32 and NTFS volumes on Win9x/Me/NT 4.0/2000/XP and Server 2003 systems for file remnants and recovering previously deleted data.

Filemon Enterprise Edition

Filemon Enterprise Edition monitors file activity. Using Filemon, IT professionals can track file activity on both local and remote systems. Further, Filemon tracks the applications that access files and records the data in real time to simplify troubleshooting problematic applications and file access issues. Filemon works with the Windows NT 4.0/2000/XP and Server 20003 operating systems.

Figure C

Filemon lists processes, requests, disk paths and more.

Filemon’s captured file activity data can be filtered according to a number of criteria to help narrow searches to specific criteria. Once the appropriate information is captured, the file activity events can be output as a text file or printed for review.

Regmon Enterprise Edition

Tracking stray and problematic registry errors can prove maddening. Regmon Enterprise Edition monitors registry access in real time, which greatly simplifies not only determining which applications are accessing the registry when problems occur but also in determining the actual registry keys in question. Regmon can monitor both local registries and those on remote systems.

The utility captures data according to filters you specify. Once captured, Regmon data can be output to a text file and printed, just as with Filemon.

Insight for Active Directory

Identifying faulty Active Directory configuration issues is much easier with Insight for Active Directory, which monitors LDAP calls (and the results of those directory requests) made from any system on the network. Using the data Insight for Active Directory collects, administrators can review the causes of authentication and access issues, research logon, file sharing and application errors and determine the source of replication failures.

Figure D

Insight For Active Directory lists processes, requests, input information and more. When an event is selected, additional information associated with the event is displayed in the bottom pane.

AD Explorer

Another potent Active Directory troubleshooting tool included within Winternals’ Administrator’s Pak, AD Explorer, provides a time-saving utility for finding, removing and editing objects and attributes within Active Directory. Using AD Explorer, administrators can also insert new objects within an existing Active Directory domain, view object properties and configure security settings.

AD Explorer is a powerful accompaniment to Insight for Active Directory. Double-clicking an entry from within Insight for Active Directory’s Event Pane prompts AD Explorer to open the item. The linked behavior helps Winternals’ two Active Directory utilities work together and simplifies Active Directory troubleshooting by ensuring that additional information about an event, object or attribute is never more than a few clicks away.

TCP Tools (TCPView Professional and TCPVStat)

Winternals’ TCP Tools combine two networking applications into a single utility.

TCPView Professional supports monitoring network traffic on Windows 9x/NT 4.0/2000/XP and Server 2003 platforms. While Windows’ native netstat command provides basic networking monitoring capabilities, TCPView Professional reveals additional data associated with network traffic, including the application responsible for generating specific network activity. TCPView Professional’s ability to display activity listed by process in real time makes it easy to diagnose which application or endpoint is congesting a network. The utility possesses several filtering options and can log data to a text file to aid troubleshooting efforts associated with specific systems, actions and processes.

TCPVStat provides an additional console-based utility for monitoring network traffic. Using TCPVStat, additional information (such as the process that opened the endpoint connection or the amount of data transferred using that endpoint) can be displayed for a TCP endpoint. TCPVStat can also perform DNS name resolution to reveal the friendly name of a system associated with an endpoint or process.

Neither TCPVStat nor TCPView Professional are installed by default with Winternals’ Administrator’s Pak. I suspect this is due to conflicts that can occur when the utilities are loaded on networks that also use Norton Antivirus software. When installing the Winternals’ Administrator’s Pak, you must select a Custom installation and specify that the two network monitoring tools are installed with the other Adminisrtator’s Pak utilities.

Mid to large support

The tools and utilities included in Winternals’ Administrator’s Pak are geared toward IT professionals supporting midsize to large organizations. The tools’ remote configuration capabilities certainly contribute to the software suite’s cost, but the ease of use and flexible administrative options they add justify the expense.

Future installments will explore in greater detail the steps required to maximize ERD Commander 2005’s recovery tools, the file and registry monitoring utilities and the Active Directory applications.

Hacking Layer 2 : Fun with Ethernet Switches

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Basics of Cisco Switch Administration – Part 2

Introduction

In Basics of Cisco Switch Administration - Part 1, we covered some of the basics of Cisco switch administration – how to log in, how to show configuration, how to change interface speed & duplex, how to enable switch ports, and how to show switch port status. In Part 2, we will stick to the basics of switch administration by covering how to save your configuration, how to use the Cisco Network Assistant, how to speed up switch port startup, and basic VLAN commands.

How to save your switch configuration

In Part 1 of this series, we talked about how to enable/disable ports and how to change speed & duplex settings. Those are necessary administrator functions but, when you are done, you must save your configuration. Cisco switches will not automatically save your changes. If you make these changes and the switch looses power, those changes are gone. You must save your changes when you are done. The minimum that is required is to save your changes to the local switch NVRAM. There are two ways to do this, let me demonstrate:

The textbook method of savings your configuration is: Switch# copy running-config startup-config However, a legacy command that is short and sweet is: Switch# wr Both of these commands save your running configuration in RAM to the file NVRAM:startup-config. When the switch is powered off, the running-config is lost. The startup-config is read when the switch boots and the running-config is created. I also highly recommend that you save your configuration onto TFTP server, in case your switch’s local NVRAM is completely lost. Once you have a TFTP server running, you can easily save your configuration to it like this: Switch# copy running-config tftp

How to use the Cisco Network Assistant

The Cisco Network Assistant (CNA) is a free graphics tool included when you purchase a new switch. It is used to administer Cisco network devices. CNA is a feature-rich tool and I cannot possibly go into everything it can do in this short article. I recommend CNA to anyone who would like a graphical interface for their Cisco network devices. Basically, CNA gives you an overview screen of your Cisco devices, like this:

Once you click on Configure then Port Settings, you will see something like this:

From here, you can configure the state, duplex, speed, and other options for your switch ports. In fact, you can configure most switch features with the CNA. Keep in mind that for all Cisco switches, there is also the web-based interface. It may be more limited than what CNA offers. This interface can be accessed directly with your web browser, or it can be launched via CNA. Here is a sample screenshot of my Cisco 3550 web-based interface:

How to speed up switch port startup

Switch ports could be connected to a variety of devices – other switches, routers, trunk ports, PC’s, or VoIP phones. Each of these devices has a different configuration. When a device is connected to a switch port, the switch will attempt to negotiate settings to match this device. These negotiations include ones for the Dynamic Trunk Protocol (DTP) (to see if the connected device wants to setup a trunk) and Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) (Used to ensure that the connection will not cause a loop).

These both take time and will delay the ability of your device (such as a PC) to transmit and receive data from the network. Most of the time, you are connecting a PC to a switch and you just want to be able to use the network as soon as possible, right?

The commands I recommend enabling on all PC/laptop/printer switch ports include these (All configured in interface configuration mode):

switchport mode access: Sets the switchport into a non-trunking mode

switchport nonegotiate (optional): Disables the switchport from negotiating

spanning-tree portfast: Disables STP negotiations which speeds switchport forwarding (ensure this switchport only connects to an endpoint device)

Basic VLAN commands

Most companies today use Virtual LANs (VLANs). As an administrator, you should know how to 1) see what device is on what VLAN and 2) to change the VLAN that a device is in. As you know, if your device is in the wrong VLAN, it won’t be able to communicate with the servers that it needs to talk to and/or it may be on the wrong IP subnet. T

what VLAN a device is in, my favorite command is show vlan brief. Here is an example:

As you can see, this command shows you what VLANs exist on this switch, and what switch ports are in what VLAN. Now, say that you want to change interface/port Fa0/21

from VLAN 1 (the default) to vlan 131. Let me show you how to do that:

That’s right, you simply go into interface configuration mode on the interface you want to change the VLAN, and use the switchport access vlan XXX command. Once you are d

one, to verify the vlan membership, just run the show vlan brief command again, like this:

You can see from the command output that Fa0/21 is now a member of VLAN 131.

Summary

Here is what we have learned:

1. How to save your switch's configuration
2. How to use the Cisco Network Assistant
3. How to speed up your switch port startup
4. Basic VLAN commands