Mounting Web directories

It is now possible to access your Web Provider home directory as a drive on your PC. This facility is available from any PC on campus using the standard Microsoft Networking client supplied with Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7.

To access a Web directory from Windows you need to map a network drive on your PC. From 'My Computer' select 'Tools' and from the menu select 'Map Network Drive' or if you are using Windows 7 open 'Computer' via the desktop or Start Menu and select 'Map network drive'. Put in one of the options given below for the folder path and select any unused drive letter (maybe W for ease). You should use your Web Information Provider username (as RDG-HOME\username) and password to access this directory by selecting connect using a different username and password.

In order to provide workarounds for a couple of problems, four shares have been created.

Before doing major work, you should test that the case of the filenames is correct and that these match the links in the html files. We would recommend that all files and directories are named in lower case.

Also, Main Information Provider usernames for academic and service departments (usually have a '1' as the third digit) can write into the directory above their home directory (the parent directory & the main directory for the Department). In order to allow the transfer of files into this directory, the share command should be modified (as indicated in 3 and 4 below). username should be replaced by the username your Web Information Provider username.

1. The default... mounts the home directory and the case of file names is left untouched:
\\webhome\username
This setting can be used in most cases.

2. Mounts home directory and converts all uppercase characters in the file and directory names to lower case:
\\webhome\homelo%username

3. Mounts the parent to the home directory and the case of file names is left untouched:
\\webhome\parent%username

4. Mounts the parent to the home directory and converts all uppercase characters in the file and directory names to lower case.
\\webhome\parentlo%username

In addition, please note that:

- if you experience difficulties connecting with 'webhome' you can try \\webhoment\username

- files beginning with '.' (usually UNIX system files) are hidden when connecting this way (they are still available, but will not show up in directory listings)

- this method of connecting to the directory is case-insensitive; if you have two files or directories with the same name but in different cases (e.g. 'test', 'Test' and/or 'TEST'), unpredictable results will occur!

- all created files will have world read permission (rwxr--r--); if you want to change this, you will need to login to the account under UNIX and change this as before (with 'chmod').

If you are having difficulty mounting the drives, try, at a DOS prompt, using

net use W: \\webhomeNT\username %username

where username is the Web Information Provider username. It may be that after doing this once, the directory will then mount in the normal way.