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For anyone on the Mac platform looking to transfer large documents too big for email, but don’t wish to open up insecure FTP ports and deal with cumbersome FTP applications, Rumpus is worth a look.  It brings the power of FTP file sharing to the masses, and allows for the easy transfer of large media files.  
In my humble opinion, the killer feature of Rumpus is it’s web interface.  Once enabled, you can create user accounts with web access permission, making it easy to distribute web URL’s to clients and customers for easy login.  The web interface itself isn’t the most modern or flashy, but the layout is simple, and it allows for fine tuning of permissions and easy upload/download access.

Maxum software makes upgrading Rumpus simple.  You just download the entire self contained application as a demo and copy it over the current version that is sitting in your applications folder.  It’s able to pick up your settings and registration info right away without any hassle.  Except for maybe one….

Occasionally, I will run across a weird glitch.  After upgrading, I will find that when I reach the web interface, I will get my web browser’s authentication window instead of the drab Rumpus authentication box.  When I first encountered this problem, I didn’t think much of it.  It still let me authenticate and I was still able to peruse through my shared FTP folders.  But after a short time, I was getting complaints from clients that they were not able to consistently upload or download.  Sometimes it would work and sometimes it didn’t.  Switching browsers had no effect, nor did adjusting .

After some time troubleshooting, I pulled the rumpus.conf file from backup and compared it to the one currently in place.  I found that the only difference was the cookies were set to ‘no’ on the new one and ‘yes’ on the old one.  After switching the value on the current .conf file, I was able to get the old authentication box back and my file transfer issues cleared up.

Moral(s) of the story:  never underestimate the power of cookies.  And always keep a backup

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About Iris Professional Services
Iris Professional Services is a computer consulting company operating offices in both Seattle and Portland. Businesses throughout the Pacific Northwest rely on our expert IT consultants for all their network IT support services.