Grabbing files from an old domain.

June 6, 2006 6:42 AM

How do I download files from a webserver if the domain has changed?

Had a domain, it expired, someone grabbed it before it could be renewed. That's fine.

However, the files for the domain are sititing on a personal unix server, with running under Plesk 6.0, so there is still access to the actual files, but how? I go into file manager, but there is only an upload button.

All I want to do is download the files for backup purposes.

There are three domains on this server, two of them active, one is the expired. Is there a way I can ftp in to this server and one of its different domains to download this stiff.

The server has a unique ip address.

posted by Brandon Blatcher to computers & internet (8 comments total)

unless i'm missing something, you should just be able to ftp to the ip.
posted by soma lkzx at 6:50 AM on June 6, 2006

Sounds right to me -- the IP resolves the same as domain names for all web connection/ftp software.
posted by traderjoefan at 6:59 AM on June 6, 2006

Um, yeah, the IP address, using the domain login info did the trick.

Thank you for the simple info!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:07 AM on June 6, 2006

Yup. FTP to the IP address and 'GET' the items.

FTP is horribly insecure, of course.
posted by unixrat at 7:10 AM on June 6, 2006

Oops! Too slow!
posted by unixrat at 7:10 AM on June 6, 2006

what about wget?
posted by Wild_Eep at 7:14 AM on June 6, 2006

If you want to access the server through HTTP, you can add a (temporary) entry to your hosts file that lists the domain and its old IP address. The whole point of the hosts file is to override the normal chain of DNS resolution.
posted by Rhomboid at 1:28 PM on June 6, 2006

Of course, someone will probably say something here about "just use http://nn.nn.nn.nn" to access the site by IP... The problem with this is that it doesn't work if there are vhosts, i.e. more than one domain being hosted on that IP address. The vast majority of sites on the net are hosted this way, except only for the largest sites that have dedicated servers. In order for vhosting to work the browser has to add the Host: header which tells the server which of the multiple sites it's referring to. If you try to access a HTTP server by IP address you will only ever get the default domain, which is only useful if a single site is hosted on that server.

So don't go telling people to access HTTP sites by IP address. It's just bad advice. Use the hosts file.
posted by Rhomboid at 1:32 PM on June 6, 2006