Dashboard Web File Viewer

[Vertech1]

Did anyone ever get this working for any of their users besides the admin?  Let me describe;

You can enable dashboard access and forward port 80 or 443 (443 for secure html) to then access the EX2 or 4 directly via your WAN ip. This allows you to use the built in web viewer app to upload and download files when you are away from your home.  Other users that you have added to the EX4 can log in via there own username and password and they will be shown a limited version of the dashboard with only the viewing rights to the directories that you have assigned them.  However, they can not download, or upload anything which makes this useless for sharing files.

So to summarize, remote dashboard access as the admin works perfectly,  remote dashboard access as a sub-user is useless.  

I have also noticed that if I login to the admin account, then logout and back in as a subuser on the same PC, the sub-user account works perfectly.  However I can’t go to my users homes and login then logout so they can have access…

Any ideas? 

[Cybernut1]

Vertech1,

I just tried it with my non-admin user and was able to download and upload a file without any problems.

But then I read your final paragraph. My aforementioned attempt was done in Chrome incognito mode but I had had already accessed EX2 dashboard as admin and logged out before trying as non-admin - and thought that maybe that’s why it worked.

So to test your point about first trying with the non-admin account, I switched to Chrome’s regular (non-incognito) mode. This Chrome did not know anything about my just tried attempt - essentially it was a fresh login attempt. And I logged in as a non-user first this time - and yes, you are absolutely right. I can navigate through the directory trees in web file viewer, but al file operations like move, copy, upload, download, etc. are dimmed out and are not available, rendering the web file viewer useless.

This is clearly a bug - one that may not have been reported to WD yet(?)

I dug up the code (using Chrome’s debugger) and see a clear difference between the CSS applied to the working icons and the non-working icons.

Working icons (happens when you first login ad admin, logout and then login as non-admin):

 

Non-working icons (happens when you first login as non-admin):

I tracked the code behind this to the file  /usr/local/modules/web/pages/addons/web_file_server_main.html - but notice that the default class for those images is “icon” - but during page load of non-admin first cases, some variable is not being set somewhere (or being set incorrectly) that is causing the class code to add on the gray_icon class:

And based on the code in the web_file_server_main.html, I believe the offending code is coming from the javascript code in /usr/local/modules/web/pages/function/web_file_server.js - in particular, I believe the highlighted code on line 384 (see pic below) of the javascript file to be the main issue - but I do not know why (ie. I don’t know why the id_now_path variable is being blank for non-admins):

I am not familiar with WD’s code and that is my main obstacle in digging further. But this is definitely a bug and should be addressed by WD…but first someone should report it. Vertech1, please feel free to do the honors I don’t think they treat posts here as formal bug reports - I guess one needs to open a support case with them.

[Vertech1]

Cybernut1,

Whew, you went a lot further with that than I did!  I went ahead and copied your findings into a new case with WD.  We’ll see how far it goes. 

The thing is, if WD would just fix this it would go a long way towards making people happy about being about to share files with remote users.  This is super easy, and only active when Dashboard access is on.

I also added it as a new idea, so any votes there might bring additional attention to this.

I sure hope WD follows up on this.

[Cybernut1]

Vertech1,

Thanks for entering a support case with WD. Indeed, this might help many folks with the whole file sharing option securely if it is fixed. I will also now look for the idea and vote on it.

[Cybernut1]

If someone stumbles upon this 2-month old thread, just to let you know, this bug has been now fixed in the latest firmware 1.05.21 released a few days ago. Web File Viewer app now works just as expected.