I'm pretty sure I understood what you're asking. I have to deal with users on a day to day basis so interpreting requests is one of my skills

1. You have an HTTP accessible directory: http://www/~srini
2. When someone reaches that directory now, they get a directory list.
3. When you put index.htm into that directory, the browser loads index.htm
4. You'd like a link on your index.htm page to be able to direct the browser to http://www/~srini and present a directory listing.

One question would be, how to people get to your directory in the first place? Are you giving them the URL (via e-mail or verbally) or is it a link off a Student or Office Directory (for example). If it's either of those methods, my suggestion will still work.

1. Modify your individual directory configuration in the web server configuration file to exclude index.htm from the DirectoryIndex variable (for Apache).
2. Modify the Student/Office Directory listing to include index.htm and the listing now says:

Code:

<a href="http://www/~srini/index.htm">Srini's Home</a>

3. When you give out your home directory listing, make sure you include the trailing /index.htm in the URL.
4. In the index.htm, have a link that points to just your home directory:

Code:

<a href="http://www/~srini/">Directory Listing</a>

And that should take care of it.

If you want to eliminate a few steps or are unable to modify your DirectoryIndex variable, you can simply use an alternate html file (like random.htm). Just make the same changes to the Directory listing and the URLs you provide to friends.

Another option works if you have php or perl installed. I did a quick google search and found this:

http://www.evoluted.net/community/co...orylisting.php

With this, you can provide a very nice looking configurable directory listing through php. I haven't reviewed the code for vulnerabilities or anything so I'm not recommending that you use it, just providing it as an example of code that's already on the 'net and ready to use. (If you do decide to try it, make sure you go though the script and understand what the script is doing first so you don't leave your system open to attack.)

Oh, and there certainly is a web server on your system. If you

Code:

$ telnet [yourservername] 80

you might get a server signature string which will identify the server, assuming the admins haven't obfuscated it for security reasons (unlikely if they allow directory listings since that's generally considered a minor security issue). Type

Code:

GET / HTTP/1.0<enter><enter>

to exit out of the session.

Hope that helps.

Carl