IIS on Vista Home Premium for local network file sharing?

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RickD

280 posts

Ultimate Geek

#31763 29-Mar-2009 22:06

I need to setup a webserver to share some files with another PC on my home network (has to be via HTTP, can't use an FTP server etc), so I was thinking installing IIS on my Vista Home Premium box would be the easiest way to go.

But I'm worried about security once it is enabled as this is my main system for everyday use, so a couple quick questions for anyone who has used it;

Is possible to limit access to the server only to other PC's on my local network?
Can the IIS service just be started manually when I want to have the server running? Or must it auto start?
Is there any other security tips I should know before I do this?

If running IIS is not a good idea, I guess I could setup an XP/Linux virtual machine and run IIS/Apache on that, but it would mean sharing a folder on my host to the guest, and then all transfers would be routed through the VM as well.

Cheers!

chiefie

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#204081 29-Mar-2009 22:27

You will probably find that you can't install IIS on Home Premium.

And even if possible, make sure you configure IIS to answer only on your internal IP address (have you had any IIS experience?)

Alternatively is, get an Apache Virtual Application (for VMWare) and run it in virtual environment. This way you won't need an actual hardware pc.

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sypher

22 posts

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#206007 8-Apr-2009 13:28

could you not just create a share and give the appropriate permissions? if you share a folder and go to \\ip.address.here\share_name depending on how you have the computer setup it may ask for credentials, just need to put in computer-name\user-name and your password

if you want to lock it down you can create a new user on your computer and give that user access to your share, map it as a drive on client computers etc..

if you want to use iis you would need install it (programs and features / windows components)
create a new virtual directory under the default site and set the path to the dir you want to share, enable directory listing. navigating to server.ip.address/virtual_directory_name sould bring up a list of files/folders and allow the client to download files.

if you are connecting to the internet through a router external addresses wont be able to access iis unless you foward traffic to port 80 of your server, if you are connecting with dialup... well you dont really need to worry about it anyway

Nety

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#206037 8-Apr-2009 16:07

As above can you not just use microsoft shares? You can set the security up to only allow the access you want and is a lot easier to setup then IIS.

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sypher

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#206039 8-Apr-2009 16:20

oops read the original post and had another question in there

Can the IIS service just be started manually when I want to have the server running? Or must it auto start?

the iis service is called world wide web publishing, you can right click on computer, click manage, expand services and applications, find the service, right click and hit properties, change the startup type to manual... when you want to start it up just select it from the services list and click start, click stop to stop :3

the only reason i can see you needing to use iis is if you were running linux on your other pcs. you said 'pc' so that pretty much rules out macs.

even if you are running linux on the clients you should still be able to open windows shares.

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Snowflake

#206084 8-Apr-2009 21:02

first of all your web server will only be available to computers on your local network unless you punch a hole in your firewall to publish it out to the internet. you can also limit ip range in IIS but its probably unnecessary.

secondly - yes you can start/stop any time you like. with IIS you can either use services control panel, or wrtee a batch script for your desktop/start ment

to start:
net start "IIS Admin Service"
net start "world wide publishing service"

to stop:
net stop "IIS admin service" /y

if you cant install IIS on home premium, there are other options without having to turn to Apache running in a virtual environment. lots of free and open source options, also the free "ultidev cassini" web server http://ultidev.com/products/Cassini/

by all accounts http is a lot easier for interoperability than file shares to various devices so i'd stick with it (can you connect to a windows file share from an iPhone?)

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RickD

280 posts

Ultimate Geek

#206101 8-Apr-2009 22:13

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I needed a webserver because using wget in linux wouldn't download from a share. Should that have worked?

Anyway I my web server up and running tonight - ended up creating an XP VM and installing Apache on it. I've shared some folders on my host machine to the VM and then added them to the Apache config as Aliases. I restricted the IPs that can access the webserver to only local IPs as well.

You can install IIS on Home Premium but I decided I didn't want to add anything else to my OS install.

mjb

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#206144 9-Apr-2009 09:41

wget will download from ftp.

Honestly, install your distro's smb client package, and just mount a share:

mount -t smbfs //server_name_or_ip_address/share_name /mnt/local_mount_point

and then use cp. Depending on the OS requirements, you may have to provide additional parameters to mount for authentication.

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