If you have a remote Allsky Website or a remote Server, the Server Name, URL, and Image Directory settings in the WebUI can be very confusing.Read this page carefully.
It may take 5 or 10 minutes, but it's important that you understand what you are doing and why so that you can fix any future problems quickly.
At a high level, a website is a collection of files
sitting in a directory on some computer's disk drive.
If a company called Classic Cars has a website at
https://classiccars.com,
the directory on its computer that contains that website
might be called cars.
It may have sub-directories containing related files like
wheels and
seats.
If you want to get information on red wheels you enter
https://classiccars.com/wheels/red.pdf into your browser,
and software called the "web server" on the classiccars.com computer
starts in the cars directory,
then goes to the wheels directory,
then gets the red.pdf file
and sends it to your browser.
The web server mapped the
https://classiccars.com/wheels/red.pdf URL to the
cars/wheels/red.info file on the server.
Likewise,
when you go to the Allsky WebUI, for example via http://allsky,
your Pi's web server looks in ~/allsky/html
since that's what the Allsky developers specified as the root of the WebUI.
We now know there are TWO paths to a file in a website:
- a URL used in a browser
- a file path name used when logged into the server
Allsky needs to know about BOTH paths to files on your remote Website. Sometimes mapping a URL to file location on a server is easy, and other times it's more difficult.
1. Easy case: server directory structure matches URL
If you are having a problem with your remote Website settings, this case probably doesn't apply to you unless you know almost nothing about computers. Read it anyhow because it will give you a better understanding of the problem.
You want to create a remote Allsky Website so you purchase a plan with a hosting provider
for a website with a URL of https://mysite.com.
The provider gives you a login on their server and tells you the:
- Server Name
- User Name
- Password
In the WebUI you set the Remote Website's
Website URL
to https://mysite.com/allsky
and Image Directory
to /allsky
(or allsky, depending on your service provider).
2. More difficult case: directory structure does NOT match URL
You have the same website URL as above,
but when you log into the server you
see a directory called public_html.
The hosting provider tells you that you need to put file into that directory
in order to see them via the https://mysite.com URL.
In this case the web server is mapping the https://mysite.com URL to
the /public_html directory on the server.
You need to create a /public_html/allsky
directory on the server and install the Allsky Website there.
The URL to the Allsky Website is still https://mysite.com/allsky
but in the WebUI you'd set the Remote Server's
Image Directory
to /public_html/allsky
(or public_html/allsky depending on your service provider).
Mapping URLs to server directories like this is fairly common on remote servers that are shared by many people.
3. Hardest case: you are totally lost
If the hosting provider didn't tell you where to put your files on their server, you'll need to figure it out. When you log into the server you see a directory called users and inside it is a directory called your_login_name. Inside that directory is a public_html directory.
You first try creating the allsky directory in users but it gives you an "Access Denied" message.
You then try creating the allsky directory in
users/your_login_name
and it works, so in the WebUI you set the remote Website's
Image Directory
to users/your_login_name/allsky.
After
installing the remote Allsky Website
you go to https://mysite.com/allsky in your browser
but get a "404 - Not Found" message.
Frustrated, you create an allsky directory in the
users/your_login_name/public_html
directory on the server.
It's late so you go to bed.
The next day you go to https://mysite.com/allsky and see your Website,
but notice the startrails, keogram, and timelapse files aren't there.
To help determine what's happening you run the following on your Pi:
allsky-config compare_paths --website
This command tries to determine both paths to the
allsky directory -
the location on the server where the https://mysite.com/allsky points to,
and the location of the directory on the server when you log into it.
It returns:
UPLOAD directory = /users WEB directory = C:\www\users\your_login_name\public_html\allsky A list of files on the UPLOAD site is in '/home/pi/allsky/tmp/comparePaths.sh-WEBSITE/upload-ls.txt'. A list of files on the WEB server is in '/home/pi/allsky/tmp/comparePaths.sh-WEBSITE/web-ls.txt'.
The UPLOAD directory is what you see when you log into the server.
The WEB directory is where the allsky
directory is on the server when you log into it, i.e.,
it's the directory on the server that the https://mysite.com/allsky URL maps to.
You notice that both directories have users in them
so you (correctly) determine the /users UPLOAD directory
is the same as the C:\www\users directory on the server.
That means the files that are being displayed in a browser are in
users/your_login_name/public_html/allsky
on the server.
Allsky uploads files to the location specified in the
Image Directory setting,
which is still users/your_login_name/allsky.
You look at that directory on the server and see the
startrails, keogram, and timelapse files.
You fix the problem by changing
Image Directory to
users/your_login_name/public_html/allsky
and deleting the users/your_login_name/allsky directory
on the server since it's not used.
You then run generateForDay.sh --upload on the Pi
to have Allsky upload the startrails, keogram, and timelapse files
from last night to the correct place.