read access to my server, good/bad/not recommended?

[bazz]

Hi,

I am considering providing a service to my customers where their websites can read some text files from my server. I reckon this would require the setting up of read-only access to my server or perhaps, just to one domain on my server.

Would you guys recommend this or would it cause potential security issues?

Is there a perl module that could help with this?

I am asking in this forum coz it would be perl that we use to do this.

bazz

[KevinADC]

generally files and folders have read access, otherwise you would not be able to visit websites from the internet via http. So providing read access should be no security problem at all, unless it's to sensitive or restricted data. Write access is a different story.

[nkrgupta]

Hi,

I am considering providing a service to my customers where their websites can read some text files from my server.

bazz

Do you mean reading text files which are on the server but not on that particular customer's domain i.e. outside of their web path/virtual directory? If it is in their domain, then nothing needs to be done i guess.

PS: I'm assuming that your customers' sites are hosted on your server.

Naveen

[bazz]

Thanks guys,

Basically, I shall store files for my clients website, on my server, in their own domain. I am considering providing a service where other websites, hosted on different servers can access the files for my clients - with clients approval of course.

I understand what you said Kevin, about read access to be able to access web pages. The files I speak of will be text files initially and then will be 'moved' to within my MySQL Db. I thought that this could only be accessed from domains on my server without making config changes but I know, I could be wrong.

I already do it with .jpegs (subject to a script which allows only 'approved' domains. However, as it is set up presently, if I type the direct url of the textfiles, they are 403'd.



bazz