Dreamweaver not recognizing symbolic link as directory

Question

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.

What OS is this? Is it a Mac, or a Linux/Wine thing going on? — Soviero, Feb 06 '12 at 21:27
Server is linux. My machine is Windows 7, CS5.5. I've done links like this before without issue so I'm not really sure what's going on — Steve Robbins, Feb 06 '12 at 21:43
Oh! The symbolic link is on the server, and you are connected via ftp... This may be a limit/option of the FTP server. It would be a security issue to allow symbolic links over FTP because you could make it point anywhere... That's just my guess though... What hosting provider are you using? — Soviero, Feb 06 '12 at 21:47
@Kevin What's the URL have anything to do with FTP Symlinks?? — Chris S, Feb 07 '12 at 02:10
@Chris I was going to use nmap to figure out what FTP server it's running and then look up how it deals with symbolic links... — Soviero, Feb 07 '12 at 03:32

Chris S · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-08T02:50:59.393

0

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).

edited Feb 08 '12 at 02:50

answered Feb 07 '12 at 02:09

Chris S

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apache/centos.. – Steve Robbins Feb 07 '12 at 20:26
As far as I can tell followsymlinks is on. it's in my httpd.conf, virtual hosts file and htaccess – Steve Robbins Feb 07 '12 at 20:36
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". – Chris S Feb 07 '12 at 20:39
This is why I'm asking questions and you're answering them. If I knew what I was doing I wouldn't be here. – Steve Robbins Feb 07 '12 at 20:46
So what FTP software are you running then? – Chris S Feb 07 '12 at 20:49
I do not know.. – Steve Robbins Feb 07 '12 at 23:24
You'll have to figure that one out before I can help you further. May I suggest [unix.se] as a good place to ask "How to determine what FTP software my CentOS VPS is running" – Chris S Feb 07 '12 at 23:43
vsftpd 9 more chars – Steve Robbins Feb 08 '12 at 01:18

Dreamweaver not recognizing symbolic link as directory

1 Answers1