Pimlical Android Help

Setting up a Remote Server (Subscription Feature)

New in V-4.2 is the ability to setup Remote Servers which allows Pimlical to access a USB storage device (such as a USB hard drive or USB key) attached to a router, or to any web page that the user has access/login rights to.

For each Remote Server, there are six attributes which need to be set up in the Preference: RemoteServerList. Each attribute is separated with a comma from the other attributes. There is no limit on the number of remote servers that you can setup.

        Tag                This is the user-friendly name that you will use to specify which remote server you want to use in AutoSync, Backup Everything or the Internal File Manager.

        Protocol       This attribute is either FTP or FTPS to indicate which protocol will be used to access the Remote Server. Routers typically use FTP, whilst Web pages typically use FTPS. FTPS is more secure, so always endeavor to use FTPS if both protocols are supported.

        IP/Domain    This attribute is the address of the Remote Server. Typically you will use an IP address to access the router (normally 192.168.0.1) and a domain name to access a web domain (such as PimlicoSoftware.com).

        Path               This attribute specifies the file path to the root of where files are stored. In the case of a router, you will usually find a folder name here (sda1 on a Tenda router, G on a TP-link router etc.), or if there is no folder name, just the forward slash (/). In any event, the Path attribute must end with a forward slash.

        Username    This attribute is the user name of the Remote Server (default in the case of a router is admin) and in the case of a web domain is whatever user name you use to log in to the website.

        Password    This attribute is the password that you in conjunction with the above username to log into the Router or web domain. Note that in the preference, the password is always scrambled - it is only unscrambled when you bring up the preference RemoteServerList, select a particular Remote Server and tap the Edit button.

When you view the RemoteServerList preference directly in the Default.txt preference file, you will see that all Remote Server attributes appear as a long, single string, which uses the vertical bar ( | )  character to separate off each Remote Server Attribute list. A typical display of the RemoteServerList preference in Menu | Preferences would be something like:

Router, FTP, 192.168.0.1, /sda1/, admin, &frzmt;3p^j*
Pimlico, FTPS, pimlicosoftware.com, /, Candelabra$,fpQEkvZ*s(qv

There is also a preference RemoteServerTimeout that specifies how long the timeout is before Pimlical concludes the FTP server is off-line. The default value is 3s, but if you see you are gettting frequent timeouts, by all means increase this value to say 30s. It's a good idea not to make it too long, as if you are using the Internal File Manager when Pimlical goes to access the Remote Server it will have to wait for the timeout to determine that the server is off-line which would give Pimlical the appearance of hanging.

You can change the order of servers in this preference by selecting a specific server and tapping the OK button (at that point, the selected server is moved to the top of the list). Note that both AutoSync and BackupEverything can explicitly reference a particular Remote Server, whilst with the Internal File Manager you can long-press the File Manager icon to get a list of all Remote Servers and select one for use in the Internal File Manager.

Setting up a Router as a Remote Server

 A simple way of setting up a Remote Server is to connect an external USB hard drive or USB key to your network router. Most contemporary routers have a USB port to which you can connect a USB device. If you log into the network router (usually on the address: 192.168.0.1), you should be able to configure access to this hard drive. You can access the drive either via FTP or the more secure FTPS (if you have not set up a user name and login for your router, this is definitely the time to take that necessary step to improve security!). The screenshot below shows a typical setup screen for sharing the drive on the USB port (This is for a Tenda router - your router will likely have a similar setup screen):




In this case, your drive can be accessed through ftp://192.168.0.1. This router does not support FTPS, so you need to setup the FTP as the Protocol attribute in the RemoteServerList Preference in both P/A and P/D. The login attributes for the remote server entry would be set to admin,SYnZ_1314_Aox  - i.e. admin is the user name ("Guest Account" here) and SYnZ_1314_Aox is the password that you assigned to log into the router. For the tag, pick any name to identify it such as Router.

The IP/Domain and Path attributes (in both P/A and P/D) would be set to 192.168.0.1 and /sda1/ - that is the IP address of your router on the local network (most likely the same as this), a comma, and then the path to the hard drive. In this case, it's /sda1/ - note that the path starts with a forward slash and ends with a forward slash. There might be no foldername - in that case just use a single forward slash after the comma. It is imperative to have something have something after the comma as if it is left blank, Pimlical will not access the remote server at all.

When setting up a drive for the first time, it's probably also a good idea to have an Android File Manager that handles FTP (like File Manager+ ) so you can review files on the hard drive and verify that files are being written as expected to the appropriate directory. When specifying any paths, remember that paths will always use the forward slash for that drive. It's just a bit of an historic anomaly that Windows uses the backslash for paths on local drives.

For comparison with the above, here is the information from a TP-Link router - in this case, the Advanced tab that is displayed after you put 192.168.0.1 into the address field of a web browser has the information about the attached USB storage device:



In this case, the IP address of the router is also 192.168.0.1 and the user name is also admin.

Setting up a Web Domain as a Remote Server

This same mechanism can be used to access a web-based server that you have access/login rights to. Obviously you can only access a web domain that you own or one that the owner has explicitly granted full access rights to you for.

In that case, you would most likely want to use FTPS as the protocol (it's unlikely a web-page would permit insecure FTP type access). You would then setup the six attributes for the enty in the RemoteServerList preference with the domain name of the website (such as PimlicoSoftware.com) - which would use the web page: www.PimlicoSoftware.com. Typically there will be no path, so just use a single forward slash ( / ) for the path. Note that if you set up several sub-folders on the domain, you can, if you wish, have several Remote Servers set up in RemoteServerList that directly access sub-folders on the same domain.

Setting up a web-based server if often a lot more complicated due to idiosyncrasies of various web-hosting sites, local firewalls, etc. so be sure to set aside quite a bit of time for this! Again, it is highly recommended that you first set up your domain for access via File Manager+ and Windows File Manager and get that all working properly before attempting access through Pimlical.

Access to files on Web pages over the internet will be slower than accessing files from the router, so you might want to increase the value of the preference: RemoteServerTimeout.