Connecting to FTPD with a Web Browser

[Steve Strobel]

We are working on a user interface for updating the firmware on our product.  We have FTPD working and a routine that will take the received file and store in the MicroMonitor's TFS (flash file system).  That works great when using a standard FTP client (we have been using the command-line version included with W2K).  We are testing it with a modified version of httpdemo.

Since many people are not comfortable with a command line interface, we hoped to use a web browser or maybe Windows Explorer as the FTP client.  For some reason, though we can get either of them to connect to FTPD, they won't display the files from the in-memory file system.  The "ls" command does work from the command-line FTP client.  Occasionally we get some kind of error message about "cwd".  While it is true that FTPD doesn't seem to support "cwd" even from the command line client (it does support "pwd"), both IE and Windows Explorer will show the files on a different FTP server we have access to that doesn't support "cwd" either.  Can anyone suggest why IE and Windows Explorer won't display the files?

If we do get the above problem solved, I would expect that uploading files with Windows Explorer would work normally (enter ftp://192.168.0.24 or something like that as the filename, if you need a password, go to the file menu and select "Logon As" and enter it, then paste files from the Windows clipboard into the directory on the FTP server).  Does anyone know if it is possible to upload files using a web browser in a similar way?  Web browsers don't have a "Logon As" menu option, nor a way to cut and paste files.  

Ideally, what I would like to do is use the GoAhead web server to provide a page that the user could connect to with his web browser.  That page would have a link to get the latest firmware from our web site (so he could download it to his PC), then another button that would let him transfer that file to our unit using FTPD.

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Steve

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Steve Strobel
Link Communications, Inc.
1035 Cerise Rd
Billings, MT 59101-7378
(406) 245-5002 ext 102
(406) 245-4889 (fax)
WWW: http://www.link-comm.com
MailTo:steve at link-comm.com