Tools: Uploading HTML pages and images via a Unix shell account

["Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Thought this might be interesting to a select few techwhirlers:

Last night, I was helping Milady to upload some test HTML pages to her Unix
shell account via Telnet; she's teaching herself HTML via handcoding (in one
of various obscure Unix text editors) using Laura LeMay's excellent book for
beginners, and encountered a puzzling problem: an embedded jpg image file
(using the Image/Src tag combination) wouldn't display, even though the
image file displayed just fine on her computer before she uploaded it. We
spend a frustrating half hour or so trying to figure out what was wrong, and
so far as we could tell, nothing was... the syntax was perfect, the
capitalization was perfect (Unix is case-sensitive), and the Web page
displayed just fine on her Mac.

Then, the solution dawned on her, and 'twas indeed one of those Homer
Simpson moments: The default upload behavior for many Telnet clients assumes
that if you upload a file to your Unix account, you want the file to be
private, and the software sets the usage/access permissions on the file
accordingly. That means anyone accessing the file through a Web page won't
be able to open the file until you change the permissions (using the chmod
command) so the file can be read by people other than yourself. She did, and
the file displayed perfectly. Not something I'd have thought of in a million
years; Unix lies too many years in my past.

An obscure problem, but knowing about it might just save one of you some
hair pulling in the future!

--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
"User's advocate" online monthly at
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"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a
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