Web access to Windows 2003 home directories

Hello

Is it possible to use IIS 6 to give users web access to the contents of
their home directories. I want my users to be able to go to a URL in IE
(perhaps opening it as a webfolder - but not necessarily) and be able to
upload and download their personal files. I know that IIS6 supports
WebDAV but it doesn't appear to allow users access to their normal home
directory, c.f. FTP in user isolation mode.

By 'home directory' I mean the private folder for personal files that
users get when their account is created. The one stored within AD as an
attribute value. See
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/adschema/adschema/a_homedirectory.asp?
When setting up a webdav site in IIS it implies that you cna access
'home directories' but it is referring to seperate folders that have to
be setup. These are not the same as the user's normal home directory.

Compare this to FTP. With IIS you can setup an FTP site in such a way
that when users loginthey are taken straight to their home directory.
This is because IIS reads the values of two AD properties called
ms-IIS-FTP-Dir and ms-IIS-FTP-Root. By making their concatenated value
the same as their normal home directory value you can easily give your
users FTP access to their personal files.

IIS 6.0 doesn't appear to support this for WebDAV but I was hoping that
I was overlooking something.

If IIS can't do it does anyone know of any other software that would
enable me to make home directories accessible through a web broswer.

Many thanks

Nigel Bruce
PC Group Leader
Information Systems Services
University of Leeds
LEEDS, LS2 9JT
United Kingdom

Hi,

You could get this working "automagically" through some careful preplanning,
but it's probably not what I'd recommend.

IIS FTP home directories, and AD User Home Directories are completely
different things. For one thing, FTP per se isn't Active Directory aware
(well, FTP itself, indepedent of Microsoft, isn't AD aware). Secondly, AD
Home Directories are designed to be used in an SMB environment by desktop
applications.

But, there are ways around this:

a) as you know, FTP Server will default to a folder that shares the user's
logon name if that folder exists when the user logs in
b) if you create/set the user's home directory to %username% when creating
the user account, then a folder with the prerequisites of (a) is satisfied
c) if you run your FTP server on the same server that is holding your AD
Home Directories created in (b) -and- you set the appropriate root folder,
then users will be logged into their home folders

WebDAV works over HTTP, not FTP, so you'll need to configure your webserver
to get that working. I don't see this as too difficult an issue to get
working:
a) create a root folder to hold all user's home directories, and share that
(using SMB)
b) create your user's home folders using the %username% syntax
c) create a new website, setting the folder you created in (a) as the root
of the website
d) tell your users to go to the web folder <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://servername/username" target="_blank">http://servername/username</a> and
their home directory should be visible.

If I recall correct (IIRC): not all applications use the "home directory" -
some use "My Documents" instead. You might want to do some research into
this. IIRC Home Directory is an older setting that's not so widely used
anymore. None the less, the same stuff can be set for My Documents if you're
redirected that to a server using a GPO.

Cheers
Ken


"Nigel Bruce" <N.Bruce RemoveThis @leeds.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:41698825.40703@leeds.ac.uk...
 > Hello
 >
 > Is it possible to use IIS 6 to give users web access to the contents of
 > their home directories. I want my users to be able to go to a URL in IE
 > (perhaps opening it as a webfolder - but not necessarily) and be able to
 > upload and download their personal files. I know that IIS6 supports WebDAV
 > but it doesn't appear to allow users access to their normal home
 > directory, c.f. FTP in user isolation mode.
 >
 > By 'home directory' I mean the private folder for personal files that
 > users get when their account is created. The one stored within AD as an
 > attribute value. See
<font color=purple> > <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/adschema/adschema/a_homedirectory.asp?</font" target="_blank">http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/adschema/adschema/a_homedirect....asp?&l</a>>
 > When setting up a webdav site in IIS it implies that you cna access 'home
 > directories' but it is referring to seperate folders that have to be
 > setup. These are not the same as the user's normal home directory.
 >
 > Compare this to <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://FTP." target="_blank">FTP.</a> With IIS you can setup an FTP site in such a way that
 > when users loginthey are taken straight to their home directory. This is
 > because IIS reads the values of two AD properties called ms-IIS-FTP-Dir
 > and ms-IIS-FTP-Root. By making their concatenated value the same as their
 > normal home directory value you can easily give your users FTP access to
 > their personal files.
 >
 > IIS 6.0 doesn't appear to support this for WebDAV but I was hoping that I
 > was overlooking something.
 >
 > If IIS can't do it does anyone know of any other software that would
 > enable me to make home directories accessible through a web broswer.
 >
 > Many thanks
 >
 > Nigel Bruce
 > PC Group Leader
 > Information Systems Services
 > University of Leeds
 > LEEDS, LS2 9JT
 > United Kingdom<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->