server... feeling brave...

Dave Stones · 18-03-2005, 15:34

here's what i want to do...

we have a machine sitting chugging away in the house all the time, which contains all our dvds, music, videos, pictures and whatnot, so we can view them downstairs. now, what i want to do is set up some sort of web page for the technically illiterate in my house to get to the files so they can watch them up stairs if they want to watch something different to everyone else(going into "my network places" is too difficult for them, trust me...). so, can anyone shed some light on how it would be done?

the computer is called mediacentre; is it simply a case of creating a simple website with directory listing, and putting the links as \\mediacentre\video\wahtever.mp3? or is there a method that will work, and will do it better than this? it only has to be accessible from the internal network, setting up an entire web server etc isn't necessary...or legal...for what we're doing...

if anyone can make head or tail of my post help appreciated

Millay · 18-03-2005, 17:12

Can you not just add network drives to there pc's?

Richard M · 18-03-2005, 17:31

Just install Apache and in httpd.conf just set "Docroot" to whatever your media folder is.
Then open up http://addressofserver/ to view a directory listing.

Dave Stones · 18-03-2005, 17:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Richard M

Just install Apache and in httpd.conf just set "Docroot" to whatever your media folder is.
Then open up http://addressofserver/ to view a directory listing.

sounds simple enough...

so if the IP is 10.0.0.100, it would be http://10.0.0.100 and it just works?

slight snag though... its set up as follows:

images (logical drive i: )
video (logical drive v: )
music (logical drive s: )
apps (logical drive f: )

is it simple enough to let it link to all of these, or is it better off having them all consolidated into one area?

*beware: novice at work*

Graham M · 18-03-2005, 17:44

well as for the address youd connect to as you are using Windows File & Printer Sharing it'd be http://mediacentre

KingPhoenix · 18-03-2005, 18:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave Stones

sounds simple enough...

so if the IP is 10.0.0.100, it would be http://10.0.0.100 and it just works?

slight snag though... its set up as follows:

images (logical drive i: )
video (logical drive v: )
music (logical drive s: )
apps (logical drive f: )

is it simple enough to let it link to all of these, or is it better off having them all consolidated into one area?

*beware: novice at work*

The best way to do this, would be to map each of these drives on each of the clients, then write your webpage to call V:\filename.ext (or whatever letter you use to map with) ......... otherwise it will take a bit of jiggering around and moving files on the server

or you could write different pages, i.e.

http://video.mediacenter/ but you would have to enter that into the hosts file on the client pc.... as it wouldnt answer the dns, unless you use the server serving the files as a dns server too.......

Hope that sounded right

Richard M · 18-03-2005, 18:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave Stones

Quote:

Originally Posted by Richard M

Just install Apache and in httpd.conf just set "Docroot" to whatever your media folder is.
Then open up http://addressofserver/ to view a directory listing.

sounds simple enough...

so if the IP is 10.0.0.100, it would be http://10.0.0.100 and it just works?

slight snag though... its set up as follows:

images (logical drive i: )
video (logical drive v: )
music (logical drive s: )
apps (logical drive f: )

is it simple enough to let it link to all of these, or is it better off having them all consolidated into one area?

*beware: novice at work*

There are two ways I can think of to do this, one uses aliases and the other uses Virtual Hosts. Both are configured in httpd.conf.

Code:

Alias /icons/ "C:/Apache2/icons/"

<Directory "C:/Apache2/icons">
    Options Indexes MultiViews
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

In this case, typing http://10.0.0.100/icons/ would display the contents of c:/apache2/icons.
This way is probably what you want to use.

Better example:

Code:

Alias /images/ "i:/"
<Directory "i:/">
    Options Indexes MultiViews
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>
#########################
# And now the second one
#########################
Alias /videos/ "v:/"
<Directory "v:/">
    Options Indexes MultiViews
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

ntl customer · 18-03-2005, 18:45

If you've got IIS/XP Pro then it's a snap to set up a simple internal webserver. You might be limited to a max of 10 connections though.

Or you can use something like Abyss webserver which is just as easy to set up.

Dave Stones · 18-03-2005, 22:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Richard M

Just install Apache and in httpd.conf just set "Docroot" to whatever your media folder is.
Then open up http://addressofserver/ to view a directory listing.

following on...
.
using your guide in another sever post i just about got apache running. however when i change DocumentRoot to D:/ (this machine's media folder, testing purposes) it puts out a directory listing of c:/apache2/htdocs no matter what i do. any suggestions, is there something else i should be changing somewhere?

__________________

well, i solved my own problem.

DocumentRoot "D:/" was what it was initially.

DocumentRoot "D:" i tried, and lo and behold it works. fickle things, these computers... can't they just ignore the wrong slashes?