RBrowser Connection Preferences for SFTP

Other Topics

SFTP Site Preferences

The preferences in RBrowser have two levels: global and site specific settings.

Site preferences apply to a single site only. This panel is different for each connection protocol. Below is the panel for the SFTP protocol. Use the RBrowser/Site Preferences (<COMMAND>-) menu to bring up the Preferences Panel.

Site Preferences can be used on a site even if it is not open. If the site is not open the new settings will be saved in the preferences file and used next time the site is connected to. If you want to edit these preferences before you ever log in, use the "Site Preferences" button on the login panel.

Options Tab:

Character Encoding:
You can tell RBrowser what character encoding the remote host uses. This could help the browser to correctly display characters in the upper ASCII set (e.g. ¥ or ª, etc.) which are used in a lot of languages and interpreted differently on various hosts. The default is UTF-8.

Open At Startup:
As a convenience, some sites can be auto opened when RBrowser starts up. Use this option for sites you always need.

Show Home Directory Only:
This option can be set on an unopened site. If set, RBrowser will load only the home folder and its subfolders. If you are not interested in browsing the entire machine, this is a quick way to get to your files. Default is ON.

SSH Port:

Custom Port on the SSH-SFTP server. This port can also be entered on the Login Panel before connecting.

Site Name:

Every site can have a meaningful name assigned by the user. This name will appear on the top of the Site's viewers, also if the GO and Preferences menus.

Limits Tab:

Maximum Connections:
This is the maximum number of open connections RBrowser will hold simultaneously to the remote site. Holding multiple connections speeds up folder loads and virtually all other operations.

Maximum Persistent Connections:
RBrowser will keep some of the above mentioned connections open. This speeds up access to the remote site, since connections will not have to be opened every time the File Viewer is touched.

Permissions for New Empty Files:
Files created on the remote host with the File/New Empty File command will get these permissions. Entry should be in the 0655 or rwxr-xr-x format.

SSH Mode Options:
RBrowser can connect securely to the remote host in different ways. The default mode is to combine the SSH shell and SFTP connections. See Using SFTP-SSH for details. Some older servers only accept SSH protocol 1 connections. For those servers check "SSH Protocol 1 only". It will add the necessary option to the ssh client. These options MUST be set before login to have any effect, so set the on the Login Panel by clicking "Site Preferences " before login. If the remote host is a Mac, by default "Keep Metadata" meaning that on this site RBrowser tries to maintain the resource fork/Finder info data on file ops. In this case pax is used for file transfers. In some cases pax can trash file/group ownership. For that reason, metadata awareness can be turned off. Then, just like with any other UNIX host, SFTP or SCP is used for file transfers and file metadata is ignored. This option is really useful for root logins.

Proxy Tab:

Use SSH Proxy:
Enter the login info for the SSH proxy host here. For a description of how SSH proxy works see Secure Shell (SSH).

Transfer Tab:

Remote-to-Remote Advanced Options:
These options are explained in Secure Shell (SSH).

Advanced Tab:

SU user/password This login/passwd pair will be user the change user's credentials after login. Can be used if SSH security settings disallow direct root logins. Be sure to read its limitations in Secure Shell (SSH).

Set:
Saves the new preference settings. Also, all entries are verified (the remote shell must exist, etc...).
Cancel: keep the old settings.
Delete Preferences:
Upon any successful login the preferences files are saved. These files will show up under the Remote/Site Preferences menu. If the preferences were called up on an unopened site, this button will erase the file and remove it from the preferences list. Preferences files can be found in ~/Library/Application Support/RBrowser/.