File manager

The File manager is a tool designed to simplify working with the file system in the ispmanager web interface. It provides a convenient way to manage files, serving as an alternative to more complex operations performed in a terminal or via FTP. File manager is available in the control panels for all service plans. It can be used to carry out standard file and folder operations, such as:

• viewing
• modifying settings
• copying
• moving
• deleting
• archiving and extracting
• uploading files from your device to the server, and vice versa

Files can be managed by user-level accounts or by accounts with superuser rights. For more information on permissions, please refer to the article on Account levels.

Users have access to their own website, email, and email domain files. There may be restrictions on reading, writing, or executing specific items. Accounts with superuser rights are not subject to any restrictions within the file system.

Getting started with the File Manager

To start using the File Manager:

1. Go to the File Manager section.
2. Familiarize yourself with the interface and select the actions you need for your tasks.

Interface and navigation

• Name — name and type of the file/directory
• Size — file/directory size, measured in bytes and larger units.
• Rights — the access rights assigned to a file or folder within the operating system.
• Owner — owner of the file/directory
• Group — ser group which the file/directory belongs to
• Change date — date when the file/directory was last modified

To navigate the file system:

1. Open a file or directory by double-clicking the left mouse button.
2. Click Back on the toolbar to return to the previous directory.

File manager settings

1. Click on the toolbar.
2. Select a required action:

   • File editor code page — the encoding used by default for opening files throughout the editor. To change the encoding for an individual file, select it in the file editor using the corresponding field.

     Save your file before changing the encoding; any unsaved changes will be lost.

     List of encodings

     Remember selection — uses the encoding chosen by the user for each specific file. If the encoding has not been changed, UTF-8 is used by default.

     866 — An 8-bit character set for Cyrillic that includes support for pseudo-graphic characters. It is incompatible with WINDOWS-1251 and UTF-8.

     ASCII — A 7-bit character set containing Latin letters, digits, punctuation marks, and control characters. It does not support Cyrillic.

     ISO — A family of 8-bit encodings that support various European standards, covering Western, Central, Eastern, and Southern European languages, as well as Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, Greek, and Hebrew scripts. It is fully compatible with ASCII.

     ISO-8859-1 — An 8-bit Western European character set: includes ASCII characters plus letters with diacritics (e.g., é, ñ, ü). Suitable for HTML and email. It does not support Cyrillic.

     KOI8-R — An 8-bit encoding for the Russian language. Suitable for Unix-based systems and email.

     KOI8-U — An 8-bit encoding for the Ukrainian language.

     LATIN1 — Equivalent to ISO-8859-1. Intended for systems that strictly require the LATIN1 or ISO-8859-1 standard.

     UTF-16 — A Unicode encoding. Each character occupies 2 or 4 bytes. It is incompatible with ASCII. UTF-16BE — Unicode UTF-16 with big-endian byte order (most significant byte first). Suitable for systems that strictly require this encoding.

     UTF-16LE — Unicode UTF-16 with little-endian byte order (least significant byte first). Suitable for Windows and systems with x86 architecture.

     UTF-8 — A Unicode encoding. Character size: 1 to 4 bytes. It is the standard for text and websites. Fully compatible with ASCII.

     WINDOWS-1251 — 8-bit Windows Cyrillic encoding.

   • Records in file editor — the approximate height of the editor window, measured in lines. Value range: 5 to 100. The actual number of lines displayed in the editor window depends on the selected font size.

• Records in file editor — select the approximate height of the file editor window in lines. Possible values are 5–100. The actual number of lines in the window may vary depending on the selected font size
• Default archiver — select an archiver that will be used by default when uploading directories or groups of files. The recommended option is zip

• Default directory — select a directory where files will be saved by default

   

View a file/directory

To navigate the file system:

1. Double-click the directory name to view a directory.
2. Double-click the Back button on the toolbar to return to the previous level.
3. Double-click the file name to view a file.

Create a new file/directory

To create a new file/directory, click Add on the toolbar and complete the fields in the form: 

• Type — select File, Directory or Link. If you select Link, an additional field called Value will appear in the form
• Value — enter the name of the file or directory the symlink will point to

• Name — enter the name for the file or directory

  

View and edit a file

To view or edit a file, double-click or select it in the list, click and select Open in the drop-down menu.

When you open .log and .log.gz log files, by default, the editor shows the last 50 lines of the log file in the read-only mode.

To open a file in required encoding, select the encoding in the corresponding field.

ispmanager 6 uses Ace as the basis for its file editor. To change the interface of the editor, you can set the font size (Font), theme (Theme), syntax highlighting (Mode), line wrapping (Soft Wrap) and enable line numbering (Show gutter). Automatic line wrapping will not add any wrap symbols into the file that you are editing.

A brief description of Ace shortcuts:

View an archive

To view an archive: 

1. Select the archive you want to view.
2. Select Open catalogue in the   drop-down menu.
3. This will open a table with all the same functions that are available for files and directories.

Change file/directory attributes

To edit file/directory attributes:

1. Select a file/directory whose attributes you want to change in the list. To select multiple items, press and hold the Ctrl key.
2. Click   Attributes on the toolbar or select Attributes in the   drop-down menu. 

This will open a window with options:

• Name — enter the name of the file/directory
• Owner — select a user who owns this file/directory. Only a user with server administrator permissions can change this field
• Group — select a group that owns the file/directory. Only a user with server administrator permissions can change this field
• Change child elements — only for directories. By default, the changes do not apply to child files and directories. If you want to change the owner and/or access privileges for child elements, select an appropriate option from the drop-down menu
• Permissions — enter the permissions code as an octal mask. You can do this by hand or check the appropriate boxes below:
  • Owner privileges — users who have the same UID (user identifier) as the user who owns the file/directory
  • Group privileges — users included into the group that owns the file/directory
  • Other privileges — all other users

There are three types of access permissions:

• Read — view or download (for files) or view the list of files and directories (for directories)
• Write — edit the content (for files) or add or remove items (for directories)

• Execute — run (for files) or access the content (for directories). Unlike the read permission, execute doesn't allow you to get the list of files and directories for a directory

  

Copy or move a file/directory

To copy or move a file/directory:

1. Select the file/directory you want to copy or move in the list. To select multiple items, press and hold the Ctrl key.
2. Click on the toolbar or select Copy in the drop-down menu.

This will open a window with options:

• Move files — check this box to move files/directories to a selected directory
• Overwrite — check this box to overwrite a file/directory and directory content
• Open the selected directory — check this box to go to the selected directory after the files/directories are copied or moved

Extract files/directories from an archive

To extract files and directories from an archive:

1. Select the archive you want to extract files/directories from in the list. To select multiple items, press and hold the Ctrl key.
2. Click Archive and then Extract on the toolbar or select Extract in the drop-down menu.

This will open a window with options:

• To directory — select a directory where you want to extract the files/directories from the archive(s)
• Create a directory — if you want to extract to a non-existent directory, provide the path to that directory. For example, if you want to extract a file to directory "/22/content", select directory "22" in the tree and enter "content" into the Create a directory field
• Open the selected directory — check this box to go to the selected directory after the files/directories are extracted

If you need to extract only some files, open the archive as a regular directory, select the files you want to extract and use the copy or move function for files and directories.

Archive a file/directory

To archive a file/directory:

1. Select the file/directory you want to archive in the list. To select multiple items, press and hold the Ctrl key.
2. Click Archive and then Create on the toolbar or select Create in the drop-down menu.

This will open a window with options:

• Type — select the archive type from the list
• Archive name — enter the name for the archive (without extension)
• Delete files — check this box to delete the files or directories once they are archived

The archive with all selected files and directories will be created in the current directory.

Download a file/directory

To download a file/directory from the server:

1. Select the file/directory you want to download in the list. To select multiple items, press and hold the Ctrl key.
2. Click on the toolbar.

This will copy the files/directories to your device.

How to download a backup from a remote FTP server:

1.   A temporary file is downloaded from the back-up server to the /usr/local/mgr5/var/backup/ispmgr/ directory on the server where ispmanager is installed. 
2. The file becomes available for download, and the temporary file is deleted after one hour.

How to download multiple files/directories:

If you selected multiple files/directories, an archive will be created and downloaded.

• If you have superuser (root) permissions: the archive is created in the system tmp (usually in /usr/local/mgr5/tmp/.filemgr-tmp/root/)
• If you have user permissions: the archive is created in the user tmp (usually in /usr/local/mgr5/tmp/.filemgr-tmp/имя_пользователя/)

The archive is deleted after you download it.

Upload a file

To upload a file to the server, click Upload on the toolbar.

This will open a window with options:

• Local computer file

  Select a file you want to upload from the local computer to the current directory on the server. Use the Choose file button to find the file. To select multiple files, press and hold the Shift or Ctrl key.  

• File URL on remote server.
  • URL — enter the URL to the file you want to upload to the current directory, for example: http://example.com/dir/file.html

  • File name — enter the name for your file.

    

Move between catalogs

To go to a catalog: 

1. Click   Catalog tree on the toolbar.
2. Select the directory you want to go to and click Go to.

Add a directory to favorites

To add a directory to favorites: 

1. Go to a directory you want to add to favorites.
2. Click on the toolbar. 

Now, to move to your favorite directory quickly, all you have to do is select it from the list of favorite paths.

Deleting files, directories, and archives

To delete an item from the file system:

1. Go to the File manager section.
2. Select the items you want to delete.
3. On the toolbar, click Delete.
4. Confirm the deletion of the items.