Interactions of downloads, conversions, and permissions

[Chiefmas 40]

So I a user of mine actually had a download that triggered a conversion queued up that I noticed was running, and it got me thinking about this whole setup and led me to some questions. I tried to read through the documentation on the topics, but they seemed to vague, or more geared towards use of features and not administration/management, or at least not to the level of granularity I'm thinking about. So:

1. Downloads: How long to download queued requests hang around? I see several entries in the "Downloads" section of my Dashboard that are "Ready to Transfer". Will that just sit there forever if not manually removed?
2. Downloads: Related to #1, I have a few instances of a user that has the same item multiple times, with different states. For instance, one entry might say "Ready to Transfer" and one might say "Converting" and yet another might even say "Downloaded". Again the cleanup question comes to mind...I don't know how they are queuing up the same item, but if a conversion was required, can items just be queued up forever and sit in Ready to Transfer state? More to the point- will they just sit there and consume space in the temp location until something is done? I'm _assuming_ that a download that was requested without conversion being needed doesn't cause a copy to be made of the source?
3. Permissions: In a users settings, if "Allow media downloading that requires transcoding" is enabled, but "Allow media conversion" is disabled, do these settings interact/conflict at all? i.e. does denying "Allow Media Conversion" implicitly/silently break the "Allow media downloading that requires transcoding", or does the temp conversion for that operation not count as a "conversion"?
4. Permissions: Speaking of the "Allow Media Conversion" permission: If users are allowed that permission, is there any more granular control? i.e. if the user goes in, selects conversion from a library, even though they may have no other permissions to modify the library, can they still select the option to replace the original files? Because that would not be great. It seems particularly important for me to disable this for all my users I don't trust with that level of actually impact to the contents of the libraries if they can actually cause the source to be overwritten. ESPECIALLY if they are already denied Delete permission(which I have done for all the users that aren't me). It's not exactly a delete of course, but it is a replacing of the original, which I still don't want users to be able to do.

Thanks!

 

[Luke 42078]

Quote

• Downloads: How long to download queued requests hang around? I see several entries in the "Downloads" section of my Dashboard that are "Ready to Transfer". Will that just sit there forever if not manually removed?
• Downloads: Related to #1, I have a few instances of a user that has the same item multiple times, with different states. For instance, one entry might say "Ready to Transfer" and one might say "Converting" and yet another might even say "Downloaded". Again the cleanup question comes to mind...I don't know how they are queuing up the same item, but if a conversion was required, can items just be queued up forever and sit in Ready to Transfer state? More to the point- will they just sit there and consume space in the temp location until something is done? I'm _assuming_ that a download that was requested without conversion being needed doesn't cause a copy to be made of the source?

Hi, it is until the device downloads it. There is nothing you can do from the server to force that to happen quicker. Some devices are just difficult about allowing background processes to do the downloads. Generally speaking the more they are using the app, the sooner the downloads will happen.

[Luke 42078]

Quote

• Permissions: In a users settings, if "Allow media downloading that requires transcoding" is enabled, but "Allow media conversion" is disabled, do these settings interact/conflict at all? i.e. does denying "Allow Media Conversion" implicitly/silently break the "Allow media downloading that requires transcoding", or does the temp conversion for that operation not count as a "conversion"?
•  

They are not related, although the wording of those options should be improved.

[Luke 42078]

Quote

Permissions: Speaking of the "Allow Media Conversion" permission: If users are allowed that permission, is there any more granular control? i.e. if the user goes in, selects conversion from a library, even though they may have no other permissions to modify the library, can they still select the option to replace the original files? Because that would not be great. It seems particularly important for me to disable this for all my users I don't trust with that level of actually impact to the contents of the libraries if they can actually cause the source to be overwritten. ESPECIALLY if they are already denied Delete permission(which I have done for all the users that aren't me). It's not exactly a delete of course, but it is a replacing of the original, which I still don't want users to be able to do.

Maybe the wording here also needs to be improved. Yes, more control is possible, but generally speaking, this is a feature intended for the users that manage the server and not for every single end user of it.

[Chiefmas 40]

29 minutes ago, Luke said:

Maybe the wording here also needs to be improved. Yes, more control is possible, but generally speaking, this is a feature intended for the users that manage the server and not for every single end user of it.

That does make more sense, but I might suggest then that given the risk, maybe it should just be lumped under the "Allow this user to manage the server" permission.

 

[Clackdor 109]

11 minutes ago, Chiefmas said:

That does make more sense, but I might suggest then that given the risk, maybe it should just be lumped under the "Allow this user to manage the server" permission.

There are some situations where it's useful for a non-admin account to have conversion privileges. It would definitely be nice to have an extra option to disable replacing the original file though as that can definitely lead to disaster if the permission is granted to wrong user.

[Chiefmas 40]

1 hour ago, Clackdor said:

There are some situations where it's useful for a non-admin account to have conversion privileges. It would definitely be nice to have an extra option to disable replacing the original file though as that can definitely lead to disaster if the permission is granted to wrong user.

I agree, and I asked about that in my initial question. But the impression I got from Luke's response is that is probably not going to happen, so it seems reasonable that it should be grouped under server managing permission since he said that's what the intent of it is for. The download functionality seems to implicitly wrap the ability for the individual user to convert a file without having a global impact the way the convert function at the item level does- it's kinda funny, all the pieces already seem to be around to implement something to handle it more safely, they just aren't in the right configuration.

 

[Luke 42078]

I would say yes more options to control this are certainly possible.