Running on a remote host

[OnkelTem]

I know this is security vulnerability and almost insane, but I want autosave to work on remote hosts too. The quick hack is very simple, just edit node_modules/autosave/bin/autosave:

#!/usr/bin/env node                                                                                                                                                               

var autosave = require('../index.js');                                                                                                                                            
var program = require('commander');                                                                                                                                               

program                                                                                                                                                                           
    .version(autosave.version)                                                                                                                                                    
    .option('-p, --port [' + autosave.defaultPort + ']', 'set port to listen on', parseInt)                                                                                       
    .option('-f, --config <routes.js>', 'set config file', String)
    // adding address option
    .option('-a, --address [' + autosave.defaultAddress + ']', 'set address to bind to', String) 
    .parse(process.argv);                                                                                                                                                         

var routes;                                                                                                                                                                       
if (program.config) {                                                                                                                                                             
    var path = require('path').resolve(process.cwd(), program.config);                                                                                                            
    routes = require(path).routes;                                                                                                                                                
    if (!routes || !routes.length) {                                                                                                                                              
        console.error('Error: ' + path + ' does not define any rules in exports.routes.');                                                                                        
        process.exit(1);                                                                                                                                                          
    }                                                                                                                                                                             
} else {                                                                                                                                                                          
    routes = autosave.routes;                                                                                                                                                     
}

// adding program.address argument
autosave.start(routes, program.port || autosave.defaultPort, program.address || autosave.defaultAddress); 

Now you can run autosave -a <IP_of_remote_host>

Well, I think to make this less dangerous, we can simply add a kind of allowed hosts directive. Similar to khow xdebug remote debugging works.

[OnkelTem]

I didn't find how to attach files, so the patch goes inline:

--- autosave.orig   2012-04-11 22:40:56.000000000 +0400
+++ autosave    2012-04-11 22:28:37.000000000 +0400
@@ -7,6 +7,7 @@ program
     .version(autosave.version)
     .option('-p, --port [' + autosave.defaultPort + ']', 'set port to listen on', parseInt)
     .option('-f, --config <routes.js>', 'set config file', String)
+    .option('-a, --address [' + autosave.defaultAddress + ']', 'set address to bind to', String)
     .parse(process.argv);

 var routes;
@@ -21,4 +22,4 @@ if (program.config) {
     routes = autosave.routes;
 }

-autosave.start(routes, program.port || autosave.defaultPort, autosave.defaultAddress);
+autosave.start(routes, program.port || autosave.defaultPort, program.address || autosave.defaultAddress);

[NV]

The latest version of Autosave Server already has an address option. Although, I haven’t yet published it on npm.

Well, I think to make this less dangerous, we can simply add a kind of allowed hosts directive. Similar to khow xdebug remote debugging works.

This is valuable idea.

[Adrian-S]

What if my remote host can't run nodejs and/or autosave server ? Is there an alternative ?

[NV]

Yes, you can mount SSH drive locally.

[Adrian-S]

I use windows and host has no SSH, I only got FTP, and I did find software to mount FTP as a drive but that seams extremely slow. I would love a PHP file to act similar as the server and let the the chrome extension connect directly to the website.

[NV]

There is no PHP version of Autosave Server. It isn’t hard to write one, but I’m not going to maintain both PHP and Node.js versions.

I don’t use Windows, although googling "mount ftp" has led me to http://serverfault.com/questions/6079/how-can-i-mount-an-ftp-to-a-drive-letter-in-windows