John's Blog: Rumpus Thumbnails Folder

August 20, 2015

I have extra folders in my Rumpus content folders, called 'Rumpus_Thumbs'. Where are they coming from, and how can I get rid of them?

When a user accesses a directory listing in the Rumpus Web interface, and displays the listing in thumbnail view, there is a little more going on than meets the eye. Each file, displayed as a small thumbnail image, is actually sent to the client as a separate image file, generated by Rumpus. So, for example, in a directory listing of 30 files, Rumpus actually has to generate thumbnail JPEG images for each of the 30 files, then serve those image files up as part of the listing.

Generating each of those 30 images every time a directory listing is viewed would put a huge burden on the server. So when Rumpus displays the listing and generates the thumbnail images, it has to store them as files that can be served as part of the listing being requested and in future displays of the listing. The Rumpus_Thumbs folder holds these image files.

The Rumpus_Thumbs folder also holds meta data files and quick image preview files, as needed.

The thumbnail folder is automatically hidden from all Web, FTP, SFTP, and other users accessing the server through Rumpus. It will, however, be visible to users on the local system or to users connected to the server through some other file sharing mechanism. Unfortunately, if you want to allow Web users to see directory listings in thumbnail view, the folder is necessary. The only way to eliminate the folder entirely is to disable thumbnail views in the Web File Manager.

On a Windows server, there is no convenient way to signal that specific folders should be invisible to users of the system.

Administrators of Mac servers, however, can hide the Rumpus_Thumbs folders with relative ease. In Unix, files and folders that begin with a period are hidden by the system, so simply renaming the folder ".Rumpus_Thumbs" will cause the folders to become invisible to local users and over file sharing.

Open the Web Settings window and flip to the "Advanced" tab, then change the "Thumbnail Folder" to ".Rumpus_Thumbs" or something similar. After making the change, Rumpus will still create the folder as needed, but it won't be seen by local users.

Note that Rumpus will not delete previously created thumbnail folders, so you'll need to clean those up manually. Once deleted, however, they should not re-appear under the old, non-hidden, folder name.

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