Upload files to my Apache server
Solution 1:
I've recently installed Apache HTTP server on my computer. I have two questions:
When I enter my IP from the browser, I see a list of files/directories, just like in a FTP server. Is that a built in feature of Apache or Chrome browser?
That is a function of Apache. By default, the mod_dir module is loaded and the Indexes option is enabled. The effect is that if someone visits a directory (which has no appropriate index page) directly instead of a specific file, then instead of returning a 404, Apache dynamically generates a directory listing webpage showing a list of files.
It is generally considered inadvisable to keep this option enabled because it usually ends up exposing files that should not be exposed, so it is usually safer to disable it:
- Open your
httpd.conffile - Find your directory root(s) (e.g.,
<Directory …>) - Remove the
Indexesvalue from theOptionsdirective:Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews Indexes
→Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews
More important - how do I upload files from a remote computer to a selected folder in my server? I am really short on time and I was thinking there might be a built in way to do so, but could'nt find it. Is there?
Not as such. Apache is a web-server which means it is meant primary as a one-way server to fetch and send web-pages to clients. There is some upload-functionality which can be used to upload pages to the server, but that requires installing and configuring back-end server software like PHP, Perl, Ruby, CGI, etc. as well as setting up an appropriate server page and client-interface page.
If what you want to do is to simply upload files to the server, then you are far better off just installing an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) server. A popular (and open-source) FTP software is FileZilla which includes both client and server components.
Just remember to set up an account and password; you do not want to leave it open otherwise people could use it as a file-dump for illegal files and fill up your drive.