This service (public.logica.com) provides a range of facilities, some of which, such as FTP, are old fashioned and hard to use. It is also a central system, hosted in the UK, and for complicated national networking reasons it cannot provide the same facilities to all Logica offices or over the Internet. If you are having problems working out how to use it, please contact your One IS Service Desk.
If you have not used FTP before, or you don't understand the difference between FTP and HTTP, please ask your Service Desk for assistance - otherwise, you will be exposed to a lot of complexity, and are guaranteed to waste a lot of your time. We are happy to help, and not every situation can be covered in this FAQ.
The server provides the following:
Please note the following common problems:
If you are not familiar with authenticated FTP, please seek advice before asking your customers to use it. If you would like explanations for any of the terms above, please contact your Support Desk.
If you just need to get a large file from A to B, you should use personal FTP, for which you need a personal account.
If you need to publish files long term, or you need to control who can read them, you need a project account.
You must visit the administration page at https://public.logica.com/admin and login using your GROUPINFRA username and password, but without the GROUPINFRA\ prefix, so a user smithj would login as smithj not GROUPINFRA\smithj. This will give you a personal account and create an anonymous FTP inbound and outbound area for you. You may need to login twice to get registered.
You must visit the administration page at https://public.logica.com/admin as above, to give you a personal account. From this administration page, you can create project accounts to provide secure long-term file storage so multiple Logica staff can share files with customers and partners.
The easiest way is to use file sharing (mapping a drive) to the server \\public.logica.com while in a Logica office.
To get at your personal area, choose "Run" from your Start menu and enter \\public.logica.com\ftp\pub\firstname.surname to upload outbound files and \\public.logica.com\ftp\incoming\firstname.surname to retrieve inbound files. Here firstname.surname is the part of your email address before @logica.com.
If you have created a project account xxx, there will be an associated fileshare \\public.logica.com\xxx.
Note that this only works from inside the company for security reasons - file sharing access may not be available when working remotely over a VPN.
Note that some parts of the company outside the UK will find this does not work, and they get a range of error messages. This is caused by local networking issues, which cannot easily be solved. If this happens to you, you will need to use the hard way below.
Assuming the easy way (filesharing) does not work for you, you must use FTP, which is more complicated. We strongly recommend you use a real FTP client, such as FileZilla for this.
You will use FTP to public.logica.com - you will need to login as yourself with your GROUPINFRA account name and password. So if your personal account is smithj, you should put ftp://smithj@public.logica.com/ into your FTP client, then enter your GROUPINFRA password. If you are uploading many files, we suggest using a proper FTP client, such as FileZilla.
When using FileZilla, you should enter
then hit QuickConnect. You should now have the two sets of directories side by side, and should be able to drag files from one to the other.
To get to your anonymous FTP area, you must use the right hand navigation pane to go up to / and down to ftp.
Under there, you will see:
You should now go to either incoming or pub, then choose the folder with your name (like your email address) on it.
If you have a project account, you will find it in the projects folder at the top level.
If you need to transfer a lot of files, we suggest you use ZIP to create a single archive - this will make the transfer faster and more reliable.
Yes - more details below.
If you have access to the UK Gateway, you can use the Browse link in the top right to give you filesharing access to \\public.logica.com\incoming\firstname.surname and any other fileshares on public.logica.com - this may be easier than FTP.
You may also browse the anonymous FTP area at http://public.logica.com/transfer/ and may download files from the /incoming area at http://public.logica.com/admin/ftp/
For personal files, this is a lot easier.
Assuming the other users can perform FTP, they can get at these areas anonymously.
The easy way is to use a web browser - they just point it at https://public.logica.com/transfer and look for your directory - or you can give them a link directly to your directory.
If they want to use FTP, they can use ftp://public.logica.com but they may find this difficult or impossible to use, depending on their FTP client, local networking rules and experience with FTP.
External users must use FTP or HTTP, and will need either the project account or a subaccount, and its password. So if you have created a project account ac with a subaccount of subac, the external user will enter ftp://subac@public.logica.com/ into their FTP client, and will then be prompted for a password. Note that all account names are in lower case.
If users want to use HTTP, they can get at the contents of the ac project's public_html directory at https://public.logica.com/~ac/ - they will need to login with their subaccount username and password.
You can change the project account password from the admin interface - select "Change project password" - and similarly for subaccounts - use "Manage project non-Logica external members (subaccounts)", then select the subaccount you want to change.
If you are finding difficulties using a web browser, we suggest using a proper FTP client such as FileZilla.
If they have been uploaded by someone else to some other directory, replace firstname.surname with the other directory in the above.
Anyone can upload files anonymously to /incoming and download them anonymously from /pub. To do the reverse, you need to authenticate to the server - it is not possible to download anonymously from /incoming or upload anonymously to /pub.
Start by creating a project account, if you do not have one already. For this example, the project account will be called project123.
Create a subaccount for the client from https://public.logica.com/admin - choose Manage project non-Logica external members (subaccounts) - for this example, I'll use aclient as the subaccount name. The subaccount will be given a password, which will be emailed to you - for this example, I'll use password1234. You can create a subaccount with read access to all the project's files, or one with just access to their own directory - do the latter (HTTP and FTP to own directory).
Tell the client to FTP to ftp://aclient:password1234@ftp.logica.com/ - this will put them in their home directory, where they can upload and download files. You will see this as the aclient subdirectory when you look at the \\public.logica.com\project123 fileshare.
Note that the client may have several ways of doing FTP - either with a web browser, or a GUI FTP client such as FileZilla, or with a CLI FTP client. All of these work differently, and some may not accept a URL - their local support should be able to help them, but if not, contact the Support Desk with details of how they are trying to connect.
Often this is because they are not logging into the server. The server supports two forms of access – anonymous and authenticated. When you create a project account for partners and customers to use, they must login to get access to it – either by using the username and password (rather than anonymous and their email address) in an FTP client or by following authenticated URLs such as ftp://username@public.logica.com/ rather than just anonymous ones such as ftp://public.logica.com/
It is also possible that FTP is prohibited at their end, in which case we can supply HTTP upload/download instead.
Check you have not exceeded your disk quota. Although the server will report "Disk quota exceeded", your FTP client may display this as a wide range of errors. Check your quota usage at https://public.logica.com/admin and raise it or delete some files.
You can either login using external usernames and passwords, or using internal usernames and passwords (GROUPINFRA); it is not currently possible to mix the two. Your project account is initially configured for the former - if you need the latter, please ask.
Delete or rename the .htaccess file in your public_html directory.
If you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, please choose "Open FTP Site in Windows Explorer" from the "Page" menu first, before dragging or pasting your files into the window.
If you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, and you do not see a folder icon, then go to Tools/Internet Options/Advanced and tick "Enable folder view for FTP sites".
If you are trying to navigate to a folder, e.g. a URL of the form ftp://username@public.logica.com/%2Fprojects/projectname you should go to your home folder using ftp://username@public.logica.com/ then navigate up and down to your destination.
Go to the administration page at https://public.logica.com/admin and select the relevant project – you can then add and remove both managers and users. You cannot remove your own access.
Files in the anonymous FTP area (/pub and /incoming) are deleted after 30 days. We may be able to restore them from backup.
If you are deleting it by FTP, you need to delete all its contents first.
If you are deleting it via file sharing, you may have a permissions problem - contact the Support Desk.
Project accounts (see above) and subaccounts don't have automatic password expiration, but they will be closed when the last manager of the account leaves the company. User accounts follow the same rules as on the corporate network.
You need an FTP client – a web browser should do. For a web browser, visit ftp://username@public.logica.com/ and for a command-line client, enter ftp public.logica.com then enter your username and password when prompted.
Yes – all projects are restricted to their disk quotas, which can be set using the administration interface. There is no limit on anonymous FTP. Note that users may have limits at their end, and some clients cannot handle files larger than 4GB.
If you are uploading files over HTTP, there is a limit of 800MB. If your file is larger than that, you should split it first (e.g. with the split command on Unix/Linux).
Yes – use URLs beginning https:// rather than http:// e.g. https://public.logica.com/
We provide RFC4217 FTP-TLS (also known as explicit SSL encryption, explicit FTPS, FTPES - FTP over explicit TLS/SSL or Secure FTP) as part of the standard FTP server - you can use it with any FTP account, if you have the appropriate client software and firewall hole (if behind a corporate firewall).
We can supply sftp (FTP over SSH) by request - ask the Support Desk. Note that this requires some configuration, so please use FTP-TLS if possible).
We also support file upload using HTTPS, again by request.
FTP software such as FileZilla makes using FTP-TLS (explicit SSL) easy, and you don't need any extra configuration.
Don't forget that we offer SSL web access as well, which is probably more convenient for most users.
If you want sftp access, or need any assistance with Secure FTP, contact the Support Desk.
If the file was uploaded anonymously to your directory, you will have been sent an email giving several ways to retrieve the file. If it was sent using a project account, you can pick it up on either a fileshare (\\public.logica.com\projectname) or via FTP in the same way the user sent it.
Yes – you can put files in the project's public_html directory, and they will appear at https://public.logica.com/~projectname.
If you want to be able to download and upload your project and subproject files over HTTPS, please ask and we can install a file browser for you.
That is the file index.html in your public_html folder. If you want to host a web site, you can start by editing or replacing it. If you want to download and upload your files over the web, you can either put them in the public_html folder, or ask us for a web file browser for your account.
Any files you have transferred by file sharing or FTP and put in folders other than public_html are not visible over the web; if you want to make a file visible over the web, put it in the public_html folder and delete the index.html file. If you want to see a file over FTP, use ftp://project@public.logica.com/ as the URL, rather than an http(s) URL.
You can put files up for other people to download, but if you want to transfer a file to someone else's FTP server you must do that from your desktop directly.
Try to find out any of the following – where the customer thinks they put the data, the name of the file, the date/time they sent it, whether they logged in, and what IP address they came from. We can then look for the file for you. In general, the precise filename is usually enough.
Note that if the files were sent anonymously they are purged after 30 days. We can probably still retrieve them from backups for you. If they are in the /incoming area, see earlier questions about how to access them.
This is usually because you have created a folder under /incoming anonymously. You cannot read any files under /incoming without logging in.
This must be coming from their network infrastructure – perhaps it blocks FTP. Please provide us with full details including when it happened, what they were trying to do, what account they were using and if possible their IP address, and we may be able to diagnose it.
Just ask - but we already handle all the common ones.
They are suspended if they are unused for 6 months. You will be sent a mail from the Auto-suspend system to confirm this. You can unsuspend them from the administration GUI. After another 3 months, they will be deleted.
Yes, after 3 months. They can be removed immediately on request. You will be sent an email when your project is deleted. For a short period, we will be able to restore them from backups.
Yes. A large range of options is available – ask for details.
We support Secure FTP (FTP-TLS, also known as explicit SSL) . We do not support the older form of SSLFTP (also known as ftps or implicit SSL). We can support sftp (FTP/SSH) on request. All three of these are known (rather unhelpfully) as SecureFTP - ask your client to see which one they think they are using.
The most common reason for this is firewall configuration. First you should check you can connect via ordinary FTP - if that doesn't work, then contact your local IT support.
If ordinary FTP works but secure FTP fails, then first check you aren't using a proxy, as the proxy may not be able to perform Secure FTP.
Also check you are using 'Explicit Secure FTP' rather than 'Implicit Secure FTP'. We do not provide the latter.
Secure FTP is often blocked by firewalls. In particular, Check Point firewalls perform both a 'newlines' check and an 'FTP bounce/telnet options' check. Both of these need to be disabled to allow Secure FTP.
The simplest test for firewall issues is to attempt to transfer a file with the same client software from home; if that succeeds, then what you are doing is correct, but your network is blocking it.
If you cannot change your firewall, and cannot transfer the file from outside the firewall, then you will need to look at alternative secure transfer mechanisms - either encrypt the data before transfer (e.g. PGP or ZIP), or use HTTPS.
All projects have a maximum disk space quota. If you exceed it, you will see a message like "552 Transfer aborted. Disk quota exceeded.". If you see this, you should delete some of the files you no longer need, or raise your quota.
See the administration interface at https://public.logica.com/admin . If you need more than 5GB, ask.
Yes – give us as many details as possible – project name, possible files it may hold, possible creator – and we'll try to find it for you.
Ask.
These can be created using the subaccount administration interface at https://public.logica.com/admin – if you have problems using this, please let us know
This can come from a variety of problems. Can you try connecting to \\public.logica.com\project_name as a fileshare instead?
If you suspend it, it will be removed automatically in three months. If you need it removed sooner, contact the Support Desk who can delete any project.
Ask.
Yes. Ask for a database to be created for your project.
In principle possibly, if your application is small, but you really need your own web server for this. Ask for more details.
No. In many cases, ASP can be converted to PHP; otherwise, you need your own server.
Yes if we review it first.
Yes, but please talk to us about security.
Yes – just ask.
Yes – just ask.
Please, please, talk to us about this. We may have something already installed that can do what you want.
No. This is a production server - development-quality software should not be installed on it. You are welcome to put up screenshots and dummy HTML pages though.
Create each subaccount using "HTTP and FTP to own directory only".
Yes – visit the administration page and create a project account – this gets a corresponding we page at http://public.logica.com/~project_name and if you want another name such as http://project_name.logica.com or http://project_name.com just talk to us.
We provide a web interface to the logs at https://public.logica.com/admin – contact us if you need more information.
Note that 'security' can mean any or all of three things:
Privacy - so nobody else can spy on it
Access control - so only the right people can get it
Integrity - so we know it arrived intact
You have several non-exclusive choices - you can encrypt or checksum the file before transfer, or you can encrypt the file during transfer, or you can restrict access to the file.
To encrypt the file before transfer, you can use WinZIP or GPG - for most purposes, WinZIP will be sufficient. You can then communicate the key via some other method (phone, SMS, not email). The user downloads the file with normal FTP and decrypts it on their desktop. This provides a high grade of privacy, access control and integrity.
To encrypt the file during transfer, the user needs an FTP client that supports FTP-TLS (Secure FTP) such as FileZilla (free, and our preferred solution) or SmartFTP (NB SmartFTP has a licence fee) or they should use HTTPS or sftp. This provides privacy, access control (if a project account is used) but not integrity. By far the easiest and best understood approach is to use HTTPS.
Note that if all you want to do is ensure integrity, you do not need encryption or even access control - MD5 and SHA1 checksums are more than adequate. Talk to us about this.
Encryption is a complex issue, so please ask for more information.
If you can't find what you need in the documentation or via the administration pages, contact the ISD Support Desk.
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