Know a good php based file manager with gzip?

php file manager with recursive gzip

[cameraman]

I'm trying to move a phpbb2 board to a new host.
My internet connection doesn't do well with large quantities of files, so I'm looking to compress it, download it, upload to new server, and expand it.

I really don't want to write one (file manager) myself although the idea's getting more attractive by the hour.

So far I've tried phpwebfilemgr 2.0.6 and phpFileManager 0.9.3. The former was almost completely useless. The latter bifs up gzips so bad that apparently it's the only thing that can read them. It does zips sort of ok - it makes a file entry for each directory name which both my windoze machine and the target linux machine balk at extracting, but I was able to delete the offending entries in the zip file.

However, when I used the cpanel based file manager to extract the files on the target, all of the underscore characters in filenames were replaced with a funny x symbol.

To complicate matters, I can't run php on the target machine until the domain name propagates. I'm sure I could write a script to rename all the files, but I'd really like to have an extremely high degree of confidence that the files & contents are verbatim from the source before I can no longer get to the source.

Any suggestions?

[coopster]

Maybe it's late, maybe it's just me ... but I'm not certain I understand what you are asking?

[cameraman]

Yeah, I do tend to ramble.

Problem:

phpbb has hundreds of small files

download is better than upload, but after 20-30 files my internet connection begins to stutter and stall.

I don't have shell access on either server.

Solution:
put the hundreds of small files into an archive, server side

I didn't want to spend time writing and debugging a script to recursively gzip the forum subdirectories. So I downloaded one, wound up not working. Downloaded another, worked better but not flawless. So I was looking for a recommendation for a third that would produce an archive that I could use.

I was able to fix one type of problem that the second script created on my end after downloading the zip from the old server.
Once my domain name propagated, I wrote a script to change the funny character (turned out to be chr(215)) back into an underscore on all the files, and the forum now works on the new server.

I'd still like to have a nicer server-side file manager - the cpanel one is a bit clunky IMO. It can extract files from an archive but it can't create them, its show file is lacking, and the procedure for copying/moving files is pretty dadgummed funny.

[coopster]

I don't have shell access on either server.

Bummer. That would have made it real easy ;)

I guess you are right in that you would have to script it ... or maybe you can use one of the PHP Program Execution Functions [php.net] to create your own tarball if the scripts you have found are not effective.

[cmarshall]

I'd suggest asking the ISP to bundle it up for you as a backup.

My ISP will do it. They may charge for it, they may not.

In many cases, the ISP may have an automated backup.

Extra Peanut Gallery Comment: You should probably be doing this anyway. good best practice.

[cameraman]

use one of the PHP

Yikes. Always something new to learn.

asking the ISP to bundle it up

Yeah, the new host used to do data transfers of existing sites as part of their signup package but I learned while signing up that they stopped doing that. Would have been really, really sweet.

You should probably be doing this anyway

Definitely true. I have backups of all of my own scripts, third party ones not so much (just two apps, the forum and a help desk) - anything I've modified I've got but things like albanian and serbian language files, nope. I'm even moderately good at keeping backups of my databases.

I started writing a file manager last night, but it will be a back-burner-low-heat project.

[cmarshall]

Yeah, the new host used to do data transfers of existing sites as part of their signup package but I learned while signing up that they stopped doing that. Would have been really, really sweet.

Get the old host to bundle it up and FTP the thing to your own machine.

That's what I do to back up my site. My ISP has a vdeck feature called "Backup" that gzips my entire directory. I then FTP the big sucker onto my machine and delete it from the hosting space. It's done without human intervention, and costs nothing.

[coopster]

a back-burner-low-heat project

LOL. I'm adding "low-heat" to my definition of the same from here on out. Thanks ;)