Creating Access for the Web on solix

Checking the access rights to your home directory

In order to set up your directory for web publishing, you must have the correct access rights of your home directory so that everyone can execute files stored in it. To check your access rights, issue the following command from your home directory

ls -ld ~ 

Note: The above command uses the letter "l",not the number "1". 

You should see output similar to the following

drwx--x--x     dlette07

	or

drwx--s--x     dlette07

Note: dlette07 will be replaced by your solix user name

It is the final "x" that is important in the string "drwx--x--x". If you do not have the final "x", then you must change the access rights to your home directory. If you have the final "x", then you may skip the next paragraph, and continue with Creating your Web directory.

Changing the access rights to your home directory

This does not change the default permissions when you create a file. In order to allow someone to execute or read a file, you will still need to change the access rights manually for that file. this command only needs to be executed once.

• Log onto solix
• Issue the following command

  chmod  711  ~
  
  

Creating your Web directory

Once you have set up the permissions for your home directory, then it is time to set up permissions for your web directory. Here at FIU, your web directory must be named www

• Issue the command mkdir www
• Issue the command chmod 755 www
• Issue the command cd www
• Issue the command
  cp ~downeyt/www/default.html index.html
• This creates a web page with David Letterman's name. You will need to edit this to put your name in:
  • Issue the command nano index.html
  • Change David Letterman to your name
  • Change dlette07 to your user name on solix
  • Save the file by pressing CTRL-O, accept the name index.html
  • Exit nano by pressing CTRL-X
• Issue the command chmod 644 index.html This will fix the access rights of your home page so that you can edit the file.

This has done three things

1. created a directory called www in your solix account. The complete path to this directory would be ~dlette07/www, replacing dlette07 with your solix username.
2. created a file in the www directory named index.html This file is where the HTML code for your home page is located.
3. created a URL for you at the school. The URL would be http://www.fiu.edu/~jsmith01, replacing jsmith01 with your solix username.

How to edit your index.html file and view it in a browser simultaneously

It is possible to telnet to a school computer to edit index.html and to run a browser to view how your page looks.

• Connect to the computer solix.
• Issue the commands:
  • cd public_html
  • nano index.html
• Now you are in the nano editor, looking at your home page file, index.html
• Minimize the Telnet application.
• Start the browser.
• Now by using the ALT-TAB key combination, you will be able to switch back and forth between the browser and the telnet to solix.