Mapping Local Drives Over the Internet

Starting version 4.7, users can map a local drive from any computer over the Internet to a remote SynaMan server. This document contain step by step instructions for mapping drives on Windows and/or Mac OS X over the Internet.

Prerequisites

Drive mapping is turned off by default. Follow the instructions below to enable this feature.

Mapping Drive on Microsoft Windows

• Open Windows File Explorer, select This PC, click the right mouse button and select Map network drive... from the pop-up menu. See image below.
  
• The following screen will prompt you for connection parameters. Definition of each field is described in the table below.

  Field Name	Description
  Drive	Select available drive letter
  Folder	This must be the URL of your SynaMan server. Windows require you use HTTPS. It will not be able to connect if you use HTTP. Additionally, the URL must end with a /wd. For example: https://files.yourcompany.com/wd
  Reconnect at sign-in	If checked, Windows will attempt to create this map next time you sign-in.
  Connect using different credentials	Check this option

  See image below.
  
  
  
• Finally,

Mapping Drive on Mac

• Open Finder
• Click Connect to Server under Go.
  
  
• Enter the URL of your SynaMan Server.
  
  

Security Precautions

This feature is only available when using HTTPS. SynaMan will deny connections attempts over HTTP since that channel is not encrypted. This is done to avoid sending user credentials in clear. Although you can change this behavior by following directions below, we strongly recommend not using HTTP.

Create a file called $INSTALL_DIR\config\AllowUnsecureMappedDrives.txt to allow connections over HTTP.

Restricting Access by IP Address

For added security, you can restrict mapped drives from certain IP addresses. To do that, create a new file called $INSTALL_DIR/config/MappedDriveAllowedIP.txt and enter the IP addresses you want to allow. Connections from any other IP will be denied.

Additional HTTP methods

Additional HTTP methods are enabled in the web server, such as PUT and DELETE, which are not enabled otherwise. Because of these additional method, some of the web testing tools may flag SynaMan as using methods that should be disabled.

The only available HTTP methods are GET and POST when this feature is not enabled. Although providing additional methods does open extra doors in a web server that can be misused, SynaMan takes appropriate measures to mitigate this risk. For example:

• IP gets blocked if incorrect password attempts are detected
• IP gets blocked if an unexpected method is used against a URL. For example, using a PUT method against a resource that could only be accessed via GET will result in getting the client's IP blocked

Using Active Directory/LDAP with mapped drives

File size limitations on Windows

By default, the Windows operating system does not allow downloading larger than 50MB files. This value is often very small for most users. Unfortunately, the only way to bypass this limit is to configure the machine where the drive is mapped using the following steps:

• Open Registry Editor on Windows. Type Regedit in the Run window.
• Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WebClient\Parameters.
• Double click FileSizeLimitInBytes on the right hand side.
• Ensure Decimal is selected for Base and enter 4294967295 for the value. This will modify the maximum size to 4GB. Unfortunately, since this is a 32bit integer, you cannot specify a larger value. See image below
  
• Save the settings and exit Registry Editor.
• Restart WebClient Service from Control Panel
• Reconnect to your drives

Troubleshooting Common Problems

The network path could not be found