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. Left double-click on a file or directory to open it.
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
   • Default archiver — the archiving tool used by default when downloading a folder or a group of files. The default format is .zip.
   • Default directory — the directory used by default for saving and opening files.
3. Save the changes.

Configuring the File Editor

In ispmanager 6, the editor is based on Ace.

Use the following fields to configure it:

• Font — font size. The value is specified in pixels (px)
• Theme — visual style. Default value: ispmanager
• Mode — syntax highlighting. Default value: text (no highlighting)
• Line numbering — display of line numbers. Line numbering starts at 1
• Word wrap — visual line wrapping. Wrap characters are not written to the file. Default value: Off (no wrapping)

Adding a directory to favorites

To make working with files easier—especially within multi-level folder structures—add the paths you frequently use to your favorites:

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

Now, to quickly jump to a favorite directory, select the desired path from the drop-down list.

Working with files and folders

To start working with files or folders:

1. Go to the File Manager section.
2. Select the action that suits your needs.

Searching for files

To find a specific file:

1. On the toolbar, click Search
2. Fill in the search fields:
   • Mode:
     • New search — allows you to enter criteria to search for a file based on its location (folders) or its content
     • Previous search results — prevents entering new search criteria; clicking Search displays the list of results from the most recent search
   • Directory — the folder in which to perform the search. Default values: /root for the superuser, or / for a regular user
   • Name mask — the pattern used to find files. You may use the following wildcards: * (represents any number of characters) and ? (represents a single unknown character). For example, to find the file index.html, you could use masks such as *.html or index.?tml
   • Search in subdirectories — if enabled, the search will also include all files located in subfolders at every level within the specified directory
   • Search by content — check this box to include the contents of files in your search

     • Content mask — a specific string or portion of text to look for within the file contents

       Allowed characters and mask examples

       • * — represents any number of characters
       • ? — represents a single unknown character
       • ^ — start of a string
       • $ — end of a string

       For example, to search for files containing the site name example.com, use the mask example.*$. This will display files where the site name appears at the end of the string, regardless of the domain zone.

     • Encoding — the content mask will be adjusted according to the selected character encoding.
3. Click Search.

Creating a file or directory

To create a new file or directory:

1. Click Add on the toolbar.
2. Fill in the form:
   • Type — select File, Directory or Link. If the Link type is selected, an additional field called Value will appear in the form
   • Name — enter the name for the file or directory
   • Value — enter the name of the file or folder to be linked to the source item. Specify the absolute path to the desired item. Example: /etc/home/test. The link will then appear as: example > /etc/home/test. In the interface, the link icon changes depending on the type of object: represents a link to a folder, while represents a link to a file.
3. Click Create.

Editing files

The control panel has a file size limit of 1024 KB (1 MB) for opening and editing files. To change the maximum file size, modify the value of the FileMaxEditSize parameter in the panel's main configuration file.

To change the contents of a file:

1. Select the desired file.
2. Left double-click to open the file.

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

Changing file or directory attributes

1. Select the desired file or directory from the list.
2. On the toolbar, click Name and attributes.
3. Select the following options:
   • Name — the name of the file or directory 
   • Owner — the user who owns the file or directory. Changing the owner is possible when logged in with an administrator account
   • Group — the user group that owns the file or directory. This option is available when logged in with an administrator account
   • Modify child elements — by default, changes apply only to subdirectories. When modifying permissions, they are applied to objects at all nested levels. If you need to change the permissions for child files, select one of the available options from the drop-down list:
     • do not modify
     • change owner
     • change owner and access permissions for files and directories
     • change owner and access permissions for directories only
     • change owner and access permissions for files only
   • Access rights — specify the permissions using an octal mask. You can enter the digits manually or select the appropriate checkboxes within the following sections: Owner permissions, Group permissions, and Other permissions. In each of these sections, the mask corresponds to specific positions: hundreds, tens, and units, respectively. For each section, define three types of access to the file or folder:
     • Read — viewing the contents of a file or listing the files within a folder. The corresponding mask values ​​are 400, 40, and 4
     • Write — modifying the contents of a file, or creating and deleting files within a folder. The corresponding mask values ​​are 200, 20, and 2

     • Execute — permission to run a file. For a folder, the execute attribute restricts access to its contents and prevents listing the files within it. The corresponding mask values ​​are 100, 10, and 1

       Example

       Let’s calculate the access permissions for the file example_file. We will grant all users read-only access, regardless of their category. Editing rights will be reserved exclusively for the file owner.

       • Owner permissions (read, write) — 400 + 200
       • Group permissions (read) — 40
       • Other permissions (read) — 4

       Adding these values ​​together: 400 + 200 + 40 + 4 = 644. This is the octal permission mask for the file.

4. Save the changes.

Copy or move a file or directory

1. Select the desired file or folder from the list.
2. On the toolbar, click Copy.
3. Fill out the form in the settings: 
   • To directory — the folder where the items will be copied
   • Move files — check this box to move files from one folder to another. If this option is not selected, the files will be copied instead
   • Overwrite — check this box to overwrite existing items with the same name in the destination folder. If the items are located in different folders, they will simply be copied
   • Open the selected directory — check this box if you want to open the destination folder after the files have been copied or moved
4. Click Copy.

Upload a file to server

1. On the toolbar, click Upload.
2. Select an upload method: 
   1. Local computer file — this allows you to upload a file from your device to the current folder on the server. Click Select file to locate the file. To upload multiple files at once, hold down the Shift or Ctrl key while selecting the desired files in your file manager.
   2. File URL on remote server:
   3.  URL — a link to a file, used to download it from a remote server into the current directory. http://example.com/dir/file.html.
   4. File name — the name the file will have in the panel.
3. Click Upload.

A progress bar will appear in the form, showing the status of the file or multiple-file upload. Once the upload is complete, all the files will appear in the open folder.

Download a file or directory

To download a file/directory from the server:

1. Select the file/directory you want to download in the list. 
2. On the toolbar, click Download the file.

This will copy the files/directories to your device.

Move between catalogs

1. On the toolbar, click Catalog tree.
2. Select the desired directory. Expand the relevant branch of the directory tree if necessary.
3. Click Open to open the selected folder.

Restricting access to website pages in a browser

To restrict access to website pages for some users while allowing it for others:

1. Navigate to the following directory: /var/www/USERNAME/data/www/.
2. Select the website folder or a subfolder within it.
3. On the toolbar, click Access. 
   • Username — the user's login (in lowercase) to be granted access
   • Password — the password required to access the website pages

   • Confirm password — re-enter the password

     Save the authorization credentials so you can provide them to the relevant users.

4. Click Save.

Once the user has been added, they will be able to access the website pages by entering their login and password into the form that appears in their browser when they navigate to the restricted page.

Virus scanning

1. Select the files or folders from the list.
2. On the toolbar, click Antivirus.
3. Specify when to run the virus scan: 
   • now
   • check periodically — set a time for the scan to start automatically
     • Scan schedule — daily, weekly, or monthly. Depending on your choice, specify the day of the week or the day of the month, along with the start time for the scan. The configured schedule will be added to the CRON scheduler.
4. Click Save.

A notification regarding the virus scan will appear in the bottom-right corner. To view the log, click Details → select a report from the list → click the View the antivirus scan report on the toolbar.

Working with archives

The File Manager allows you to work with archives as if they were regular directories. To do this, the server must have the necessary archiving tools installed for ZIP, TAR, and TAR GZIP formats. The file extension must match the archive format.

To begin working with archives:

1. Go to the File Manager section.
2. Select the action that suits your needs.

Viewing an archive

To view an archive: 

1. Select the archive you want to view.
2. Left double-click to open the archive.

In the window that opens, you will see a table with the same functions as those available for files and folders.

Extracting files from an archive

1. Select the desired archive from the list.
2. On the toolbar, click Archive, then click Extract.
3. Choose a destination for the extracted files: 
   • Select an existing directory — unpacks files into an existing folder. If this option is chosen, specify how to handle files that already exist:
     • Replace — existing files will be overwritten by those from the archive.

     • Do not replace — existing files will remain unchanged. Files from the archive that share names with existing ones will not be unpacked and will be ignored by the application.

       If you need to extract all files at once without replacing or skipping any, rename the conflicting files—either within the archive or in the destination folder—beforehand.

   • Create a new directory — unpacks files into a newly created folder.
     • New directory — the name for the new folder where the files will be extracted.
   • Target directory — the folder where the selected archive will be unpacked.
   • Open the selected directory — check this box to open the destination folder automatically after the files have been unpacked.
4. Click Extract.

The files remain in the archive even after extraction. If necessary, you can extract them again to a different folder.

Archiving a file or directory

1. Select the required items from the list.
2. On the toolbar, click Archive → Create archive.
3. Specify the details for creating the archive:
   • Archive name — the name of the archive (without the file extension).
   • Type — the archive format; choose from the list: ZIP (.zip), TAR (.tar), or TAR GZIP (.tgz).
   • Choose where to save the archive:
     • Select an existing directory — the archive will be created within an existing folder. If this option is chosen, specify how to handle cases where an archive with the same name already exists in that folder:
       • Create a duplicate — the new archive will be assigned a sequential number. Format: ARCHIVE_NAME_(N).EXTENSION, where N is the sequence number. Example: Archive (1).zip

       • Replace — the new archive will replace the existing one with the same name

         When replacing an archive with an archive of the same name, the files contained within the previous version will be deleted. To preserve them, extract the files or create a new archive instead.

       • Do not replace — the existing archive will not be replaced. The archive creation process will be canceled, and an error message will appear
     • Create a new directory — the archive will be created in a new folder
       • New directory — the name of the folder (created relative to the folder selected in the tree)
     • Open the selected directory — check this box to automatically open the target folder after the archive is created
   • Delete files — check this box to delete the selected files from their original location after they have been added to the archive
4. Click Create.

The new archive will be created in the specified folder. If the corresponding option was selected, you will be automatically redirected to the folder containing the archive.

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.