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.

How to rename multiple files quickly with FreeCommander

This free Windows utility gives you the ability to rename a batch of files with one click.

 

FreeCommander is a feature-rich yet free file management program for Windows that lets you view your file hierarchies in two separate panes. Among its many features, and the one that is the sole focus of this post, is its ability to rename multiple files in one fell swoop. It lets you select a group of files and create a sequential list with a single click.

Take those images you just imported from your camera--IMG0154.jpg, IMG0155.jpg, IMG0156.jpg--and turn them into something more meaningful, such as beach1.jpg, beach2.jpg, etc.

When you launch the app, you'll be greeted with a small window with two panes. Use either pane to drill down to find the files you'd like to rename. Highlight the files to rename and select File > Rename (hitting F2 will also do the trick).

Next, from the Multi rename window, you'll see your selected files at the top and renaming options at the bottom. Below, under the Pattern header, is a File name field for renaming your files. You can type in a new file name, and you can also type (or choose from the blue downward arrow to the right) in placeholders to keep some of the existing file name. The symbol [n] is a placeholder for the name of the file, and using [c] lets you use the counter to the right to number your files. From the counter area, you can choose a starting number, the interval between each numbered file, and how many digits to include.

 

For example, I have a group of photos imported from my camera with useless IMG1523.png file names. I typed "fall trip [c]" into the name field and chose to start at 1, step by 1, and 2 for the number of digits in the Counter field, and my photos were then renamed fall trip 01.png, fall trip 02.png and so on. Much more useful for me.

There is a lot more to FileCommander, but the batch renaming function is great. And my favorite aspect of it is the preview of your new file names it shows at the top, next to the old names, making experimenting with the many renaming options risk-free. When you find a naming convention that works, click the Rename button and all of your files are instantly renamed.

For a different approach to renaming multiple files, check out Rapid Streams Name-Dropper.

Understanding Windows 7 GodMode

Although its name suggests perhaps even grander capabilities, Windows enthusiasts are excited over the discovery of a hidden "GodMode" feature that lets users access all of the operating system's control panels from within a single folder.

By creating a new folder in Windows 7 and renaming it with a certain text string at the end, users are able to have a single place to do everything from changing the look of the mouse pointer to making a new hard-drive partition.

The trick is also said to work in Windows Vista, although some are warning that although it works fine in 32-bit versions of Vista, it can cause 64-bit versions of that operating system to crash.

To enter "GodMode," one need only create a new folder and then rename the folder to the following:

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Once that is done, the folder's icon will change to resemble a control panel and will contain dozens of control options. I'm not sure it's my idea of playing God, but it is a handy way to get to all kinds of controls.