The Domain tab appears when a domain is selected in the left tree panel. When this tab is active the Domain Menu also appears allowing you to configure the selected domain. The following shows the Domain tab fields.
Enter a descriptive name for the domain. This name will be used to help you identify the name of the server.
Enter the IP address on which to accept connections. If you may limit this to a single IP address, or you may use all available IP addresses. Normally you would enter an IP address here only if you intend to use multiple domains on this computer and have more than one IP address in use on this computer.
If your PC has a "dynamic IP address", i.e. one that changes each time you connect to the Internet, leave this entry blank.
Each domain on the same FTP server needs to have a unique combination of IP address and port number. If you have multiple domains on your server this is a restriction to keep in mind. Unlike the HTTP protocol there is no ‘header’ with information on the user’s intent. This means it is not possible to create ‘virtual’ domains as is customary with Web servers where multiple domains share the same IP/port combination, since the FTP server has no way to determine what domain the FTP user intended to connect to. Serv-U does allow you to create one domain that responds to all available IP addresses in addition to IP-specific domains that use the same port number. When connections are made to this IP address the server will first look if there is a domain with an exact IP/port match to the incoming connection and route the FTP user to this domain, if no exact domain is found the user is routed to the domain that uses all available IP addresses.
Select how you would like the domain information to be stored. If the information is stored in a .INI file then it is easy to manipulate using a text editor or to move to different computers. If it is stored in the registry, it is faster for large numbers of users. For .INI file storage the default used by Serv-U is in file ServUDaemon.ini, in the Serv-U directory.
On Windows 95/98/ME there is a limit of 64Kb for .INI files. You normally need hundreds of users to reach this limit, and storing the domain information in the registry is a way to get around this limit. On NT and Windows 2000/2003 there is no limit to the size of .INI files, but Windows gets slower and slower in handling .INI files as they get larger. If the ServUDaemon.ini file size on your system reaches several hundred Kb it is time to store domains in the registry.
When stored in the registry the entries are located at:
\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Cat Soft\Serv-U\Domains\
The third option is to store user and group accounts in an ODBC database (Corporate Edition only). When this option is selected a tab appears to specify the ODBC data source. Database storage means accounts can be added/edited/deleted through the Administrator program as well as directly by a database management program. It is fast, and there is no limit to the number of accounts that can be stored.
The final option is to use the Windows NT-SAM / Active Directory as a source of user account information. This option will show an extra tab, containing the domain specific settings. Windows accounts can either come from a Windows domain controller, or the local machine user database can be used. NT-SAM / Active Directory domains do not let you edit user accounts directly, instead it simply allows the user of the Windows user accounts for FTP access.
This selection determines what type of connections the server will accept. The choices are between regular, unencrypted FTP and secure-FTP through the use of SSL/TLS. Make sure to review the section about creating your own server certificate before using secure-FTP!
This is the default, and also the only option if your server is not enabled to use SSL/TLS (as determined by the Edition of your server). The domain will not accept SSL sessions even if SSL/TLS is available to the server. The only exception to this is for remote administration sessions, those will always use SSL if it is available.
This option is also called explicit secure-FTP. The domain will allow regular FTP sessions without encryption as well as encrypted FTP sessions using SSL/TLS. The FTP client determines if it wants the session to be encrypted or not by sending the AUTH command to the server to switch to using SSL.
This option is also called implicit secure-FTP. The domain accepts encrypted FTP sessions only, through the use of SSL/TLS. As soon as the client connects to the server it uses encryption, regular FTP sessions are not accepted. Instead of port 21 for regular FTP sessions implicit secure-FTP uses port 990 by default.
The FTP port number is the port number that Serv-U uses to listen for connections. The standard FTP command port is port 21 for regular FTP and port 990 for implicit secure-FTP connections. Normally you would not change this value. However you would change it for many different reasons including security and for supporting many different servers on the same computer with a single IP address. In the case where you change this port number to something other than port 21 for regular FTP or port 990 for implicit secure-FTP, anyone connecting to this server will need to know the port number.
If your IP address changes each time you connect to the Internet you can use the dynamic DNS service to obtain a fixed symbolic IP name (such as "yourname.DNS4Me.com"). Your users can then use the fixed IP name to connect to your FTP server. Check this box to enable dynamic DNS use. Doing so will show the DNS tab, for setting up the dynamic DNS parameters.
With dynamic DNS enabled Serv-U will automatically keep your Internet IP address current. Serv-U will also take care of automatically adjusting the IP address for passive mode data transfers.
This button lets you quickly put the domain online or offline. When offline the existing connected users can continue what they are doing, but new connections to the domain are refused. Putting a domain offline can come in handy in case maintenance needs to be done on the domain’s files.