View files on linux remotely from browser - html

I have an HTML file that contains some data on different (text) files as well as where they are located locally on a linux machine.
This file is meant to be sent as an email, with the file locations being anchor tags.
I want to use my browser (Google Chrome) to view some files that are on that remote linux machine.
What I mean by that is the following:
View the HTML file in the browser of any PC (In this case multiple ones running windows)
When I click on the link, the file should open in browser (without downloading) as just plain text.
Basically I want to remotely view these files like how I can view anything on my local pc through my browser.
Is that even possible? If it is, please explain to me how it is done.
If not, can you suggest an alternative?

The Linux system that houses text files should have a server installed and firewall set. that serves required text files. Server can be any if you only need serving static files and not need any authentication or business logic. nginx and apache can do the job. and just in response header include
Content-Type: application/pdf
Content-Disposition: inline; filename="filename.pdf"
to force file to be viewed in browser.

Related

Mediawiki: Links to open local files on the server doesn't work

I have MediaWiki installed on a synology server. I would like to create a link on the wiki that would allow opening of files on the same server.
Here are the steps I did to achieve this:
Added $wgUrlProtocols[] = "file://"; in LocalSettings.php
A test file on the server: file://myServerName/path/to/file/test.txt. Putting this URL in my chrome browser directly opens the file.
Create a page in MediaWiki with a link to this file using [[file://myServerName/path/to/file/test.txt]]
When I click on the generated wiki page, nothing happens. However when I hover on top of the link, it shows the correct URL.
Can someone please point out what additional steps I need to do to get this working?
The file:// protocol points to the file on your computer. I'm not fully sure, but I think you cannot use it to retrieve file from a different machine (read my comment below about samba shares).
From quick research it looks like Chrome browser blocks requests with file:// protocol, But browsers like IE should allow you to open those files. It is done because of security reasons so the malicious site cannot open local files without your permission. You might bypass that by installing a special plugin in Chrome (look for Enable file links)
Instead of using file protocol, make those files available via Synology WebStation, and then create links that point to the file via webstation (not via path on the server). With that approach, links attached on your MediaWiki pages will work as those will be regular links.
If you don't use the WebStation, you might also try with ftp:// links (use the FTP service), or link to samba shares - that's where the file:// protocol might work, but again - I'm not sure and I cannot test it as I do not use windows.
I think that the safest/easiest/fastest way is to expose those files via WebStation.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_URI_scheme
The file URI scheme is a URI scheme defined in RFC 8089, typically used to retrieve files from within one's own computer.

How to create link in HTML that download that file

I have http://192.168.230.237:20080 Server
file located on "/etc/Jay/log/jay.txt"
I tried with "http://192.168.230.237:20080/etc/Jay/log/jay.txt" this link gives me "404 NOT Found"
Here I can I link my file to link
Your HTTP server will have a configuration option somewhere (Apache HTTPD calls it DocumentRoot) which determines where http://example.com/ maps onto the filesystem of the computer.
Commonly this will be /var/www/.
Unless you change it to / (which would expose your entire filesystem over HTTP and is very much not recommended), you can't access arbitrary files on the computer.
/etc/ is used to store configuration information for software installed on the computer. It should almost never be exposed outside the computer.
The best solution to your problem is probably:
Look at the configuration of your HTTP server and identify the document root (e.g. /var/www/)
Move your website files to that directory
If you really want to expose files under /etc via HTTP then you could also change the document root.
Your webserver might also support features like Apache HTTPD's Alias directive which allows you to map a URL onto a file that can be outside the DocumentRoot.

How to allow download of files on a HTML server?

I have setup a HTML Server to run on Windows Server 2012. I have added few virtual directories and some files.
I am trying to download a file firmware.dob. But when I click on the file the browser reports "File not found"
404 - File or directory not found.
As an admin, how do i enable users/make the browser to download file rather that try to open it?
This should be done by PHP. If you have just HTML i don't think this can be solved. In PHP you could set a Header. Perhaps you can use your admin tools of your server to set some properties of the file you're talking about. maybe the server gives you the option to force download prompts.
If you can only use HTML you might consider using a flash plugin for this. But this would only work on desktops, not on mobile phones. You could look into this: Creating download prompt using purely javascript

Opening downloaded Gist folder to inspect elements

I want to experiment with Mike Bostock's stacked bar chart (https://gist.github.com/3886208) in my browser using web inspector. I realize that I need a local copy of the example files (the index.html and the data.csv file) in order to play with it. However, when I download the 'gist' folder and open the index.html file with Chrome, the chart doesn't appear. What am I doing wrong?
Thanks!
With Google Chrome, go to Top Menu > View > Developer > Javascript console. You will see a message
XMLHttpRequest cannot load file:///path/to/data.csv. Cross origin requests are only supported for HTTP.
As per https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki
When developing locally, note that your browser may enforce strict
permissions for reading files out of the local file system. If you use
d3.xhr locally (including d3.json et al.), you must have a local web
server. For example, you can run Python's built-in server:
python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8888 &
Once this is running, go to http://localhost:8888/.

Basic HTML - does relative path to a sub-folder (using the directory name) work on a desktop?

I am doing some basic HTML exercises on a Mac OS 10.6.6.
Say I am here:
rootfolder/index.html
and I want to go here:
rootfolder/subfolder/index.html
I understand I can use the relative path to make a link:
link to subfolder
^ this works for me in my browser.
And if I wanted to shorten the href, I could just do this:
link to subfolder
When I click the short version in my browser, the link takes me to the folder on my desktop (not to the page in my browser)
I'm wondering, do the files need to be in a web host environment for
the short version to work in a browser?
When /bob/ => /bob/index.html works, it is generally because the server has listed it as its directory index, e.g. with Apache...
DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
...meaning in the request of a folder, it will first look up to see if an index.html or index.php exists (in that order).
So if you are running it from the folders of your local filesytem (i.e. on the file: protocol), it has no server and does not know that a blank directory should request index.html.
The serving of index.html (or index.cgi or default.asp or whatever) when requesting a url that points to a directory is done by the server, not the browser. It is usually done as a result of configuration setting.
It's neither a property of HTML nor a property of urls.
If your browser doesn't serve index.html — and I don't know any that do — then you've answered your own question.
Mac OS comes with Apache (the most commonly-used open-source web server) pre-installed. You can set it up by going to System Preferences, choosing the "Sharing" preference pane, and then checking the box to turn on Personal Web Sharing.
Once you've turned on Personal Web Sharing, http://addressofyourcomputer/~yourusername/ will point to the Sites directory in your user's folder in Mac OS (i.e., /Users/yourusername/Sites/). With Apache running, if you go to http://addressofyourcomputer/~yourusername/subfolder/, it will in fact serve up /Users/yourusername/Sites/subfolder/index.html if there is an index.html file in that subfolder.
Without turning on Personal Web Sharing, though, there is no server running, and so your browser is really just directly accessing your computer's filesystem. As a result, when you ask for a folder, it literally returns you that folder, whereas Apache server knows the convention that /subfolder/ is really a request for /subfolder/index.html and will re-direct you accordingly.
The default page setting/redirection works only on web servers. The browser do not have intelligence(?) for such redirection. So the second option will not work.