These showstoppers lead to an immediate update to the RC, a second RC, which can be found here

- Dennis

Changes since 1.4.0 Beta

New Features:

• A installer and upgrade script for the basic setup of ProFTPd Administrator has been added under msic/
• Email notification for the new user when the account is created
• Added localization support for the userinterface
• Added support to run ProFTPd Administrator using safemode. Of course, this disables some features.

Fixed Bugs:

• Bug 3
• Bug 7

Changes since version 1.3.0

New features:
- A installer and upgrade script for the basic setup of ProFTPd Administrator has been added under msic/
- Email notification for the new user when the account is created
- Added localization support for the userinterface
- Added support to run ProFTPd Administrator using safemode. Of course, this disables some features.

Improvements:
- Added support for php 5.3
- Spanish language file. Thanks to Guillermo Marco
- Removed all shorttags so that the webserver doesn't need to be configured to support shorttags
- Renamed directory structure admin to admininterface and userView to userinterface
- When a user logs into the userinteface for the first time, he is forced to change his password. Either the user can set his own password or one is chosen for him by GWP depending on the admins choice.
- A user can change his password anytime per userinterface
- changed all newlines from CR LF to LF to be unix complaint

Fixed Bugs:
- Fixed minor bugs
- Fixed db_structure.sql to meet a standard setup
- Fixed some Bugs in the status section

Bye,

Dennis

it has been a while since the first Beta of ProFTPd Administrator 1.4.0 has been released. The release was still buggy and had some not so minor glichtes. Furthermore, I didn?t had as much time to work on the project as I liked. But the development has picked up some momentum again and I finished the installer and upgrade script, fixed a bug in the userinterface and did some minor clean ups. The only two task which are open for the relase of 1.4.0 are:

• Support for safe_mode: Which is being worked on
• E-Mail notification: Is being implemented at the moment.

Therefore, I am confident to say that an RC will be published in the next 7 to 14 days!

Bye,

Dennis

• Time is money: One work day isn’t such big deal, but first let’s focus on the other topics cause this factor will get some multiplier which is definitely bigger than 1.x.
• Re-usability: Perl is definitely not the native choice in my particular case and my working area. Therefore, the chance that running in some bugs (parsing the blob format or on some cpan module) are rather high and furthermore no one else in my team can write bigger Perl programs. In both cases the time factor would increase, either during maintaince-phase or during development cause of some nasty bug.
• Using non standard software, where I use non-standard in the meaning that your tool / programming doesn’t support this task / architecture in a well accepted way and, therefore, hasn’t been tested in depth, your solution may work today but what happens if upgrades change the system. How reliable will it work then? This will increase your multiplier for aspect one even more.

In the end this means that your fast and inexpensive solution may be not. So where is my point. Going back to my example, I figured out that our software we use to collect our data supports some (wired) SQL dialect and some really nice reporting functionality. So I read up on this in 1-2 h and then coded my solution in another 1-2 h and went to lunch with “mission accomplished” (but the damn aircraft carrier was missing). Does this mean Perl shouldn’t be used? NO!

My point is that choosing your tool may be the most import decision to make, not only on a technical level but one a economical level, too. And there may exist much better tools than you know today. Therefore, don’t (always) rely on your so beloved tools, take a look around, it’s worth it! And I don’t support the argument, never changed a running system. It may not run in a couple of years and then your company can’t pay for your toys anymore ;)

• [Feature] A web install script so that the installation process of ProFTPd Administrator isn't a PIA anymore. Basically, as with many other web apps, you will only need to upload the scripts and then execute them from a web browser. These scripts will guide you through the installation.
• [Improvement] I want to add support to run ProFTPd Administrator when openbase_dir and safe_mode are in effect.  With the current Version, you see a lot of warnings.
• [Fix]: The Status Menu, regarding the OS information, needs some rewriting.

This is it. As soon as this is done, I'll release an RC. The biggest part is writing the installer, the rest is a piece of cake.

So where is ProFTPd Administrator going after version 1.4 is going to be released? To tell you the truth, the main part of the source code was written 5 years ago, in a time where ORM and web frameworks were not all that popular. The current version does not use one of these techniques. Therefore, I don't think that putting a lot more development time into the current basis will lead anywhere. So I'll start a complete rewrite of (Pro)FTPd Administrator after version 1.4. The rewrite will focus mainly on two aspects. First of all, I'll use a web framework (supporting MVC pattern) and possibly some kind of ORM (object-relational mapping) to have a modular basis which allows fast and easy integrator of new features. The second aspect is to not only support ProFTPd, but more ftp servers which support storing the user-accounts in a database. That's why the "Pro" part of the name is set in brackets. It'll be called FTPd Administrator 2 from that point on. Parallel to developing version 1.4 I already evaluate web frameworks and ORM libs and designing the new concept.

FTPd Administrator 2 will take some time. After the design / concept is finalized I will implement all features of version 1.4 and after that is done, I'll add support for pure-ftpd (etc.). As soon as this is done, the first stable release of FTPd Administrator 2 will hit the download page. But it will take some time.

All the users of version 1.* don't need to worry, I'll add an easy way to upgrade to V 2.

Bye,

Dennis

Bye

Dennis

during December I’ve added some new features to proftpd administrator. This will result in a new version (1.4.0) of proftpd administrator. The new features are:

• A admin can specify on a per user basis if a user can set his own password or a pasword is automatically chosen for him.
• Reworked the userView part:  
  • When a user logs into the userView for the first time, he is forced to change his password. Either the user can set his own password or one is chosen for him by GWP depending on the admins choice.
  • A user can change his password anytime per userView
• Added support for php 5.3
• Removed all (or at least most) short tags so that apache parses all php files without any additional configuration

Additional changes:

• Fixed some minor bugs
• Fixed db_structure.sql to meet a standard setup
• Changed CR LF to LF in all .php and .pl files
• Added mysql update script for proftpd_admin 1.4.0

I would like to encourage anyone to test this Beta. But DO NOT use it in a production system. Wait for a stable release! If you find any bug, please report them using the issue system. All the needed documentation for install / Updating and bug reporting can be found here. You can download the beta here.

Dennis

cause I am working more and more with perl again, I run in some problems. I know how frustrating it can be if google returns no results for your problem, I decided to document any too trivial fix here. I’ve set up my MacBook Pro to be the new development box for proftpd_admin with Mac OS 10.6. So I installed apache2, proftpd and mysql5 via MacPorts. And then I ran cpan –I DBD::mysql . But the tests on OS X failed, as follows:

The reason is pretty obvious. So you thread_stack size is too small. This can be configured in you mysql config. If you use Macports, the file should be located in /opt/local/etc/mysql5/ and be named my.cnf. Just edit the line thread_stack in the [mysqld] section. I’ve set the size to 515KB which may be too big. But the test failed with 192KB, too, so I just overshot to be on the save side. After you’ve edited the config, don’t forget to restart mysql.

Bye,
Dennis

today I've finished the installation of indefero, a project management system, which I'll use for the further development of ProFTPd Administrator and all my other projects. Currently, Version 1.3.0 has been added to the git repository. You can take a look a the project and the source code here.
If you've got any suggests for ProFTPd Administrator or you've found any bugs, please use the issue system so that I can easily track and reply to them instead of using this blog's comment system. I hope that the development will gain some moment ;)

Bye, Dennis