Date: Fri, 12 May 1995 09:16:43 -0400
From: Judy Hallman <hallman@gibbs.oit.unc.edu>
To: web-walkers@unc.edu
Subject: Summary of April 19 Web-Walkers meeting

To Web-Walkers:

Summary of April 19 Web-Walkers meeting on:

  * Relative URLs and moving from machine to machine
  * Security -- readable directories and index.html files
  * Soft links

Relative URLs
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some browsers do not handle relative URLs properly. The recommendation is
to use full URLs, for example http://www.unc.edu/gif/wellIcon.gif. If
there is a need to change them all, that can easily be done with a
utility, like a perl script (for example, Gene Hoffman wrote one to take
/hallman/home out of all the files on the OIT server). 

Security 
~~~~~~~~
Every Web directory should have an index.html file. If you name your file
something else, like homepage.html, make a soft link (see below) to
establish an alias for it. 

The reason for this is that if someone specifies a directory in a URL (for
example, http://www.unc.edu/pubs/) the browser will use the index.html
file in that directory. If there is no index.html file, the browser will
display "Index of /directory name/"  (for example, "Index of /pubs/")
followed by an option to choose the parent directory and then a list of
the files and directories in the selected directory. If the user chooses
"parent directory," they will go up a level in the directory structure.
They can keep going up the tree until they come to a directory that has an
index.html file. If there are no index.html files, the user might be able
to get into some system files or other areas they should not be able to
access. 

Further, if you name the html file index.html, the user doesn't need to
specify the filename (they just specify the directory). It's best to
include the trailing slash (at the end of the URL for a directory) because
some versions require it. 

Soft links
~~~~~~~~~~
Use the command "ln -s" to create a soft link. For example,

	ln -s homepage.html index.html

will make index.html an alias for the file homepage.html.


Atttendees:
Kathleen Crook, Sheps Center
Lynn Eades, HSL
Judy Hallman, OIT
Carol Martell, HSRC
Tom Rutledge, OIT
Bill Tolbert, HSRC

Judy Hallman (judy_hallman@unc.edu)
Office of Information Technology