Student Drop Box

We recommend using the BarracudaDrive Debian release with the Drop Box application.

The Student Drop Box application was developed for a university that required a drop box for each student.

The Drop Box application looks and behaves similar to the standard file server in BarracudaDrive. The drop box file server, which starts with the URI /box/, is the combination of the Web File Manager and the WebDAV Server. When a user visits his Drop Box application for the first time, the user's home directory is automatically created in "/BarracudaDrive-installation-directory/box/user-name/".

Unlike the standard file server in BarracudaDrive, which must be managed by using access control lists (ACL), the Drop Box application is designed to be configuration less. Each user gets his/her own home directory where the user can see his/her own files, but does not see files from other users. In addition, each user is allowed to upload content and create directories, but is not allowed to delete or modify uploaded content. Only user's with permission to use the standard file server in BarracudaDrive (/fs/) can modify and/or delete content in the Drop Box directory. It is for this reason not necessary to add roles to users that should only have access to /box/ since /box/ is not using ACL's.

As an example, assume BarracudaDrive is installed on a Windows computer in its default directory c:\bd. User 'thomas' accesses http://servername/box/ for the first time. The directory c:\bd\box\thomas is created. User thomas uploads thesis.doc to http://servername/box/, which is stored as c:\bd\box\thomas\thesis.doc. A user which has been given access to the standard file server /fs/ can now access the file as http://servername/fs/c/bd/box/thomas/thesis.doc.

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Installation Instructions

Managing Many Users

Starting with BarracudaDrive 4.2, a new user interface was added that allows adding users by uploading a CSV file. The new batch upload script is designed for institutions that need to quickly add and/or remove many users. The new user interface is hidden from normal operation to avoid confusing the typical non technical BarracudaDrive administrator. The batch upload management can be accessed by typing in http://servername/rtl/protected/admin/importusers.lsp. Do not add roles to users that should only have access to the Drop Box application. Avoid using the user editor in the BarracudaDrive administrator panel if adding many users since this interface will slow down. However, roles and the role's permission(s) must be managed by using the BarracudaDrive administrator panel.