M. J. Fromberger's dashboard

M. J. Fromberger replied on May 26, 2009 16:24 to the question "Why are s3 acl's not set correctly" in ExpanDrive:

Hi, Matt,

S3 sets the ACL for any newly-created object to "private" (i.e., full access for the owner of the object, and no access for others). In particular, it does not cascade access controls via inheritance from the enclosing bucket. It's possible to "copy" the ACL for new objects from the enclosing bucket, but ExpanDrive does not presently do this.

M. J. Fromberger replied on May 22, 2009 17:09 to the question "Not able to follow symbolic links via ftp" in ExpanDrive:

Hi, Carsten,

You can find out whether the links are absolute or relative by logging in with the command-line "ftp" program in the Terminal. Just run:

ftp yourname@your.ftphost.com

Then, at the "ftp>" prompt, run the commands


cd /your/remote/path
ls -al


Where "/your/remote/path" is whatever you have entered in the Remote Path field in ExpanDrive. If you don't have anything in that field, you can skip the "cd" line.

The entries that are links will usually have a text arrow ("->") pointing to the target of the link. If the target begins with a forward-slash ("/"), it's absolute; otherwise, it's relative.

For debugging purposes, would you mind copying the output from the "ls -al" command described above into an e-mail to <support@expandrive.com>, so that we can see what you're getting? If you could, it would also be helpful to see what you get if you open the Terminal and run

ls -al /Volumes/yourvolume

... while this drive is mounted. Here, "yourvolume" should be replaced with the drive name you have assigned in ExpanDrive.

We should be able to get this straightened out in short order.

Thanks!
-M

M. J. Fromberger replied on May 04, 2009 16:15 to the question "Ftp server shows no folders" in ExpanDrive:

Hello there, sorry for the delay in responding.

One thing to start with: Please make sure you've got the latest release, see <http://www.expandrive.com/mac/release...> for details. We've fixed a few bugs just recently, and that might help solve your troubles.

However, if that doesn't fix it for you: Are you able to connect to this FTP server using other FTP client software, such as the command line "ftp" program in the Terminal? For reference, ExpanDrive always connects in passive mode, and there is currently no option to make it do otherwise.

If the latest version doesn't get you going, and you do have the ability to send us a temporary test login on the server that's giving you trouble, that would be very helpful -- drop us a line at <support@expandrive.com> and we'll be glad to try and help you troubleshoot.

M. J. Fromberger replied on May 03, 2009 19:35 to the idea "Deactivate image preview ( save bandwith )" in ExpanDrive:

Well, unfortunately, the choice about whether or not to show image previews is not made by ExpanDrive, but by the Finder. It certainly does generate a lot of traffic, but to ExpanDrive, it just looks like any other series of requests. There isn't a special "generate preview" operation in the MacFUSE interface; the previews are generated by scanning the files directly.

So, unless you can convince the Finder not to generate those previews, I am afraid there's nothing ExpanDrive can do to prevent it, at present.

M. J. Fromberger replied on May 01, 2009 19:52 to the problem "Doesn't work with Omnis Hosting" in ExpanDrive:

Hi, fitzage,

We have run into a few FTP servers that do not implement enough of the FTP specification for ExpanDrive to work reliably. In our FTP beta, we did not check for this situation, and it led to confusing errors at unpredictable times that made it seem as if certain files were unreadable/unwritable. For our release version, we made the decision to test for compatibility up front, and report this error, rather than letting random errors occur later in the session.

If you'd like to discuss the technical aspects of the problem, perhaps with an eye toward getting Omnis to upgrade their FTP support, please feel free to drop us a line at <support@expandrive.com>.

A comment on the problem "Mac problem - S3 - privileges and not being able to add anything" in ExpanDrive:

Hi, Jon,

If you mount your S3 drive and see the two long-named folders, you should be able to see the same names if you run the command "ls /Volumes/S3" (without the quotes) in the Terminal. If you're not getting that, please feel free to drop us an e-mail at <support@expandrive.com>, and we'll do our best to help you troubleshoot. – M. J. Fromberger, on April 27, 2009 19:27

M. J. Fromberger replied on April 27, 2009 19:04 to the question "How do I get the file/folder url?" in ExpanDrive:

Hi, Jonathan,

Because S3 is web-based to begin with, copying a URL for an S3 object is a simple and sensible operation. But when you are talking to an FTP or SFTP server, there is no simple correlation between the file's path and its location according to a web server -- even if we assume a web server is running on that host.

The "path" component of a web URL is assumes that you're referring to an object that resides inside the web server's document root -- but there is no reliable way to map between an arbitrary filesystem directory on the FTP or SFTP server, and how that directory's name is written according to the web server. With S3, we don't have to guess -- we use the same URL to access the file that you would want to copy.

We plan in the future to add a kind of URL-copy feature for FTP and SFTP drives, but it will require some input from the user in order for the URLs to make sense.

M. J. Fromberger replied on April 25, 2009 14:20 to the problem "2.0, empty directories" in ExpanDrive:

Hi, Peedy -- I'm sorry for the troubles. Does this problem occur for any directory you attempt to view, or only for certain directories? Are you connecting with SFTP or with FTP?

I notice from the log you quoted that you seem to be using PathFinder; are you able to see the contents of directories using the Finder or in the Terminal, for example by running the command "ls /Volumes/YourDrive/FolderName" with appropriate substitutions?

A comment on the problem "Mac problem - S3 - privileges and not being able to add anything" in ExpanDrive:

I'm sorry, I was unclear in my instructions: The "%" that I wrote above was meant to represent the command prompt, and should not be typed as part of the command itself. Could you please try the commands again, but omitting the "%" at the beginning? – M. J. Fromberger, on April 25, 2009 14:18

M. J. Fromberger replied on April 24, 2009 23:36 to the question "Deleting a large folder is really slow..." in ExpanDrive:

Unfortunately not. ExpanDrive doesn't know that it's going to be asked to delete the whole folder; it's the Finder (or whatever other tool you're using) that sends deletion requests for each of the files and folders that it contains. You will probably get better performance if you do the deletion from the command line using the Terminal. So, for example, if your folder is named "BigStuff" and your drive is mounted as "MyDrive", you might do something similar to this:

% cd /Volumes/MyDrive

% rm -rf BigStuff

This will still turn into individual deletion requests for the contents of the folder; that's true even if you're deleting a local folder. It's just that when you do it locally, the time required to access an individual file is potentially thousands of times faster than doing so over the network. Network round trip times are measured in milliseconds; disk accesses occur in microseconds.

The command-line version will probably be a little less aggressive than the Finder about loading the contents, but it will still have to touch everything in the folder, so it's still likely to take a while. For a job like this, you are probably better off using the ssh command-line tool to log into the remote server and run the "rm" command there.

M. J. Fromberger replied on April 24, 2009 21:34 to the problem "Timeout via SFTP" in ExpanDrive:

Hi, Ben,

It seems I probably set the connection timeout a bit too aggressively. Right now, ExpanDrive will time out if the connection doesn't go through within twenty-five seconds, so if you're having 30-40 second lags, that would explain what you're seeing. I will increase the timeout period for our next update, which should hopefully take care of it. Sorry about that!

M. J. Fromberger replied on April 24, 2009 16:24 to the question "Hang during MacFUSE install, ExpanDrive not connecting" in ExpanDrive:

Are you able to connect to this FTP server with other FTP software, such as the command-line ftp tool? Also, are you able to connect with any other drives you may have defined? And, when you have this trouble, do you find anything logged in Console.app which might be relevant?

M. J. Fromberger replied on April 23, 2009 19:08 to the problem "Mac problem - S3 - privileges and not being able to add anything" in ExpanDrive:

You can actually create buckets with ExpanDrive now, it just requires that you use the Terminal. If your S3 account is mounted as "Amazon S3", you can go to the Terminal and write:

% cd "/Volumes/Amazon S3"

% mkdir "MyNewBucketName"

There are two basic reasons why the Finder's default "Untitled Folder" does not work: First, because spaces are not allowed by S3 in bucket names; and second, because bucket names must be globally unique, and so even if that name were legal, you would get a conflict everytime someone else tried to create it.

As Jeff said, we're hoping to provide a more user-friendly interface for bucket creation in the future, but in the meantime, you can do it, as I described here.

M. J. Fromberger replied on April 23, 2009 17:43 to the question "FTP connects, but the drive appears empty. Here's a test access, let's have a look by yourself !" in ExpanDrive:

Hi, Boris,

Thanks for the test account -- this will be fixed in our next update.

M. J. Fromberger replied on April 23, 2009 14:49 to the question "Does ExpanDrive allow remote access to main computer desktop?" in ExpanDrive:

Hi, Tom,

The situation you've described here is something I often do on my home network. To make it work, you must be running an SSH server on your home machine. On Leopard, you can do this by going to the "Sharing" pane of the System Preferences window, and enabling the "Remote Login" check-box.

You will also need to instruct your FIOS router to forward requests from outside for port 22, to that machine on the inside network. The exact details of how to do that will depend upon what kind of router you're using, but many routers have a web-based interface for setting up port-forwardings of this kind. Either Verizon or the router's manufacturer should have documentation for this step.

Once that is set up, you should be able to connect to your home machine with ExpanDrive. The hostname to use will be whatever Verizon has assigned as your public IP address, and then you can log in with whatever name and password you would normally use for the home machine. If you do not have a static IP number, you may have to update your drive when it changes (I find no-ip.com helps with this).

M. J. Fromberger replied on April 21, 2009 13:23 to the question "Beta 1.3.2 Installed but still FTP not functioning" in ExpanDrive:

If you are still having this trouble, please read my comment above, and follow the steps there -- we will need that information in order to fix anything. Also, please make sure you're using the latest version of the software available from the updater.

M. J. Fromberger replied on April 16, 2009 14:31 to the problem "Expandrive seen as 'brute force' login attempt" in ExpanDrive:

Hi, Shane,

Can you tell us a bit more about your setup? Are you using ExpanDrive for the Macintosh, or for Windows? If you're using the Macintosh version, are you connecting to an SFTP server or an FTP server? In either case, are you able to connect to the same server using an ordinary file-transfer client, such as Transmit, FileZilla, or the command-line "ftp" or "sftp" programs?

As I understand it, cpanel is a web-based configuration interface that an ISP or hosting provider might use. Since ExpanDrive does not connect via the HTTP protocol used by cpanel, I'm a bit puzzled as to why cpanel would give you login failures based on that. Can you tell us a bit more about what tests you performed to isolate the problem?

Feel free to drop us a line at <support@expandrive.com> and we'll try to help you troubleshoot.

M. J. Fromberger replied on April 14, 2009 19:55 to the question "Drive not showing up in finder, not connecting/disconnecting properly" in ExpanDrive:

Interesting. Well, obviously something odd's going on there. Is there any chance you could let us have a temporary testing account on the server you're having this trouble with, so that we could log in and give it a try? If that's a possibility, please drop me an e-mail at <support@expandrive.com>, since I think that would be the easiest way to figure out what's wrong.

M. J. Fromberger replied on April 14, 2009 18:56 to the question "Drive not showing up in finder, not connecting/disconnecting properly" in ExpanDrive:

Okay. So, just to be clear, are you not seeing those same files listed in the ExpanDrive listing? Or, is it that you do see those files, and were expecting something else?

M. J. Fromberger replied on April 14, 2009 17:47 to the question "Drive not showing up in finder, not connecting/disconnecting properly" in ExpanDrive:

If you connect to the same server using the command-line "sftp" program in Terminal, and run the "ls" command, do you get a listing of files?

For example:

% sftp root@your.server.name:/your/remote/path

Connecting to your.server.name...

Password:*********

sftp> ls