Question

I'm new to TWiki and can not figure out how to create links to files and directories. I've read that the file:// URLs are disabled in Firefox, but I can't get it to work in IE or Safari either. I'm running TWiki 4.1.2 on Linux and am trying to access it with Firefox and IE from Windows, Firefox from Linux, and Safari from Mac OS X. I've created a page that contains something like this:

 [[file:///valid/path/on/server/to/file.html]]

But I can't get that link to work on any OS or browser I have tried. Does a file:// URL need to resolve correctly on the server or the client? I'm also interested in having the user be able to see a list of files in a directory (again, following some valid path on the TWiki server) and then click on any file to view/download it. How is this done in TWiki?

Environment

-- AlfredvonCampe - 13 Sep 2007

Answer

I am using paths like this file://mail-server/LogFiles, without the brackets, and they work fine in IE and Linux CentOS 4 in the server (in the example LogFiles have to be shared in the server mail-server). The name have to be resolved in the client only (my server don’t have DNS configured and it works).The path have to be accesible using Windows Explorer.

I suggest you to aviod the use of shared folders and start using attachments. You could use the BatchUploadPlugin to make things easier in the initial upload of the content.

-- EnriqueCadalso - 13 Sep 2007

If you answer a question - or someone answered one of your questions - please remember to edit the page and set the status to answered. The status selector is below the edit box.

I'll have to try link style that tomorrow when I am back in the office. But I need to be able to have paths resolve on the server, since clients could access the wiki from either Windows, or Linux, or even Mac OS X. So the question is, how can I make files and directories that are accessible on the server available to users to browse and read?

-- AlfredvonCampe - 14 Sep 2007

That would work only if you put them into a directory accessible to your web server (with and without TWiki). For TWiki, there's the pub directory where attachments to TWiki topics are stored.

If you want to make many files which already exist on the server TWiki-able, you might want to consider the (configurable) auto-attachment feature useful (see TWiki.FileAttachment#Uploading_Files. Use symbolic linking to other places on your file system if you want (and if your Apache configuration allows to follow symlinks).

-- HaraldJoerg - 14 Sep 2007

The files and directories I'm interested in making available are already accessible on the server (they are put there by other processes, and I wanted to avoid having to upload them to the wiki every day). I solved the problem by creating a link from the DocumentRoot directory to somewhere in the hierarchy I am interested in, and allowing the traversal of symbolic links. So this was not a TWiki issue after all. I'm just a new to the entire Apache/TWiki administration thing, so thanks for the tips.

-- AlfredvonCampe - 14 Sep 2007

To access the directory and have it open in windows explorer file://\\servername\directory\ , Just add the file name at the end to open the file. My links look like this [[file://\\servername\directory/123.pdf][Download here]]

-- RoyCo - 29 Sep 2007