UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

When I am browsing the web and I end up in a directory with no HTML index file (ie index.html), I see something like this:

Code:

Index of /k

 Name               Last modified       Size   Description
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 115-1564_CRW.jpg   16-Feb-2001 12:01   58k

And sometimes there is something to the right of the file (ie, its description) under the "Description" column and sometimes there isn't.

I also see the description column in my ftp software.

I would like to know how to add or alter that description (I have files people download from a directory on my website, and the description would be helpful to them). I use CuteFTP as my FTP client. I am comfortable with telnet as well.

I can't find any documentation anywhere that says how to do this.

Please help me!

Thanks,
Zachariah

You will need to create the file descript.ion for each directory you want descriptions to be displayed.

Have a look at Armaster @http://www.mogacom.com/ which is a tool that can you do it for you

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction at least. I can now search on "descript.ion".

I am able to see the descriptions when I log in to my ftp account, but if I just go to:

http://contextfree.org/k/

then the descriptions don't show up. (this is where I actually find them usefull to show up)

Also I want to know how to make "descript.ion" the equivalent of "hidden" in the MS world (ie so you can't see it on that page).



After some thought - would it just be better to do a server side include of some sort, or some PERL script to generate a directory listing (and make it look at the descript.ion file for the descriptions) within an index.html file in the /k (or other) directory?

I'd really like some help here, or even just opinions (hopefully with examples)

If you are running Apache, the proper solution is to add an "AddDescription" directive in your httpd.conf or .htaccess file.

Example: AddDescription "GZIP compressed tar archive" .tgz

You must have the "FancyIndexing" option turned on also (with:
"IndexOptions FancyIndexing")

For more info:
http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/mod...adddescription