Serving Files

Summary of Steps

1. Determine whether you can serve data from a user page.
2. Define your user page location and (optionally) identify contact information for the user page.
3. Store the files you want to serve.

Steps in Detail

1. Determine whether you can serve data from a user page.

   Enter the QUERY USERPAGES command from your VM userid. If VM:Webgateway does not allow user pages, you cannot serve data.

2. Define your user page location and (optionally) identify contact information for the user page.

   Enter the SET USERROOT command from your VM userid. Select one of the following locations for your user page:

   Minidisk	All files must reside on a single minidisk. The VM:Webgateway SVM must have read access to the minidisk. Benefit: VM:Webgateway serves only the files you identify in DIRMAP files. The URLs that web browser users use to request data are case insensitive. Disadvantages: You must identify each file you want to serve in one or more DIRMAP files. (You can use pattern matching.) You cannot publish data from a PC-based web authoring tool (for example, Microsoft FrontPage or Netscape Composer) to a minidisk.
   SFS Directory	All files must reside on a single directory, and optionally, its subdirectories. The VM:Webgateway SVM must have the authority to read files you want to serve. Benefits: You do not have to identify each file you want to serve in a DIRMAP file. You can publish data from a PC-based web authoring tool to an SFS directory. The URLs that web browser users use to request data are case insensitive. Disadvantages: VM:Webgateway serves all files on the directory or subdirectory that it has authority to read if a web browser user can identify a file with a URL. You can prevent this situation by defining access control for your files. If you publish data from Microsoft FrontPage, pages that are created with the FrontPage Wizard or that use FrontPage Themes do not display correctly when published to an SFS directory.
   BFS Directory	All files must reside on a single BFS directory, and optionally, its subdirectories. VM:Webgateway requires the following permissions: Read and search permissions to the BFS directory and its subdirectories Read permission to static files you want VM:Webgateway to serve Read and execute permissions to CGI programs you want VM:Webgateway to serve Benefits: You do not have to identify each file you want to serve in a DIRMAP file. You can publish data from a PC-based authoring tool to a BFS directory. If you publish data from Microsoft FrontPage, pages that are created with the FrontPage Wizard or that use FrontPage Themes will display correctly when published to a BFS directory. Disadvantages: VM:Webgateway serves all files and CGI programs on the directory or subdirectory that it has the permissions to access if a web browser user can identify the file with a URL. You can prevent this situation by defining access control for your files. Because BFS is a case-sensitive file system, web browser users requesting data from BFS directories must make sure that the character casing they use in the URL to specify directory and file names exactly matches the character casing the directories and files have on VM. You cannot serve CGI programs that run in Webshare compatibility mode (CGI environments SVMWEBSHARE and WORKERWEBSHARE) from a BFS directory. The URLs that web browser users use to request data are case sensitive.

   The contact information you can provide consists of a person's or group's name and e-mail address.
   VM:Webgateway will display this contact information on configuration forms and in certain communications to users. Examples of such communication are:
   • Messages stating the product's configuration was successfully updated.
   • Output generated by a CGI programmer.
   • Error documents that VM:Webgateway serves when it encounters problems serving files from the user page. VM:Webgateway uses the e-mail address to include a mailto: URL. With the contact information in an error document, the web browser user who receives the error document can report the problem to someone who can fix it.
   If you do not provide a contact name, VM:Webgateway will not include a contact name on configuration forms or in its communications. If you do not provide a contact e-mail address, VM:Webgateway will not include a mailto: URL on configuration forms or in its communications.

3. Store the files you want to serve.

   Refer to Serving Files From a Minidisk or Serving Files From a Directory in the side bar for specific instructions.

URLs for Data From Your User Page

Web browser users view data stored in your user page by specifying ~userid as the first element in the path portion of the URL, where userid is your VM userid.

For example, if the VM:Webgateway service virtual machine is identified by www.company.com on TCP port 80, and user MARK defines a user page, the following portion of a URL indicates that VM:Webgateway should look for the data to serve in userid MARK's user page:

http://www.company.com:80/~mark/ . . .

If VM:Webgateway is using SSL Feature and it is configured to use SSL, begin URLs with https:// rather than http://. To determine whether VM:Webgateway is using SSL, enter the QUERY SOCKET command from your VM userid.

Browser users need to specify the TCP port number in the URL only when VM:Webgateway is not using the HTTP default. The HTTP default for the TCP port number when SSL is not in use (http://) is 80. The HTTP default for the TCP port number when SSL is in use (https://) is 443.

In the example above, because SSL is not in use and the TCP port is 80, browser users can use the following URL to address data in userid MARK's user page:

http://www.company.com/~mark/ . . .