[consulting] scaling sites with restricted downloads

[Anton]

On 31/03/06, Laura Scott <laura at pingv.com> wrote:

> 1) We're about to build two different music community sites that are going
> to need to start small but (obviously) be able to scale. Controlling access
> to uploaded mp3s etc. will be key aspects of this install. To (hopefully)
> reduce their server needs -- because, after all, they're musicians and thus
> aren't exactly flush -- I'm considering using public fileserver settings,
> and chmod-ing the folder to limit access to only via Drupal. Would that
> work? Are there limitations to this approach?

Hi Laura, I don't think that will work. From the filesystems
perspective it is Apache that is accessing it, not Drupal. It won't be
able to tell the difference between a standard Apache request and a
Drupal request - both are controlled with the Apache user account.

That is the situation in general, but there maybe a few tricky addons
to Apache that can do suid type stuff for PHP requests. I haven't
tried any though.

Hope that helps :)

--
Cheers
Anton (aka styro)