System Administration & Network Administration
linux permissions directory symbolic-link symlink
Updated Sun, 21 Aug 2022 05:18:18 GMT

Dreamweaver not recognizing symbolic link as directory


I have this directory

drwxrwxr-x  6 awdfiles                pasgroup                4096 Jan 31 17:20 awdfiles

Which I want to access via another FTP connection. The user is part of the pasgroup

I traverse to the root html directory of my desired user and create the symlink

$ cd rayhawkpas/dev
$ ln -s ../../awdfiles awdfiles
lrwxrwxrwx  1 rayhawkpas rayhawkpas   14 Feb  6 13:06 awdfiles -> ../../awdfiles

However, when I try to download the directory in dreamweaver it looks like this

enter image description here

It seems to not recognize that it's a directory.

I tried symlinking to a specific file to make sure my permissions were right

ln -s ../../awdfiles/themes/1/includes/header.php test.php

This worked fine. It showed up in dreamweaver and I was able to download and upload the file.

Solution

Your FTP Server is not configured to follow symlinks.
When configured this way a symlink will appear as a common file, just as you describe.
Change it's configuration. You haven't mentioned what software so I can't say how.

Edit:
vsFTPd will not allow synlinks that link outside the user's chroot. There's no way around that.

A possible workaround is to mount the target of the proposed symlink as a subdirectory of the chroot environment. This is an ugly kludge, but the only way around the issue using vsFTPD.

A possible alternatives, install and use a different FTPd, or use a different protocol such as SFTP. I'm not sure if Dreamweaver supports SFTP, if it doesn't you can get around that with a utility that mounts SFTP drives as Windows Network Drives (I use such a utility, ExpandDrive, but there are others).

Comments (5)

  • +0 – apache/centos.. — Feb 07, 2012 at 20:26  
  • +0 – As far as I can tell followsymlinks is on. it's in my httpd.conf, virtual hosts file and htaccess — Feb 07, 2012 at 20:36  
  • +0 – Unless you installed mod_ftp or mina, "Apache" is not your FTP software. While I'm at it, "Apache" is a company name, not software at all. They're most famous software is their web server "httpd". — Feb 07, 2012 at 20:39  
  • +0 – This is why I'm asking questions and you're answering them. If I knew what I was doing I wouldn't be here. — Feb 07, 2012 at 20:46  
  • +0 – So what FTP software are you running then? — Feb 07, 2012 at 20:49  

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