File Manager
The File Manager is a complete desktop-grade file browser inside the panel: two panes, address bar, drag and drop, keyboard shortcuts, a real code editor, archive handling with live progress, and a trash bin. Underneath it sits one of the most security-hardened subsystems in Panelica, because a web file manager on a multi-tenant server is exactly where hardening matters.
Files → File Managerhttps://YOUR-SERVER-IP:8443/files/manager| Name | Size | Permissions |
|---|---|---|
| wp-content/ | · | 755 |
| wp-config.php | 3.2 KB | 600 |
| index.php | 405 B | 644 |
Getting around
A folder tree on the left (lazy-loaded), files on the right in grid or list view, and a Windows-11-style clickable address bar with copy-path, back/forward history (persisted across sessions), search, type filters and a status bar showing selection totals. Selection works every way you expect: checkboxes, Ctrl/Shift-click ranges, lasso box selection with the mouse, select all and invert. The right-click menu adapts to context (file, folder, archive, or empty background), items can be dragged onto folders to move them, and ?path= deep links open a folder directly, which other panel pages use to jump you into an app's directory.
Keyboard shortcuts cover the essentials: Delete, Ctrl+C/X/V, Ctrl+A, F2 rename, F5 refresh, Ctrl+U upload, Ctrl+F search, Backspace/Alt+Up for parent, Esc to clear, and Space for Quick Look, a macOS-style instant preview of images, PDFs, video and audio.
Everyday operations
New file / new folder dialogs include a permission preset (644/600 style choices for files, 755/700 for folders). Rename handles one item; Bulk Rename handles many, with find-and-replace, optional regex, and a live preview before anything is touched. Copy/cut/paste works across folders with a floating "paste here" helper; name collisions produce file (1).txt style copies rather than overwrites. Upload accepts multiple files by button, dialog or full-page drag-and-drop with per-file progress; if a file already exists the server answers with a conflict and the panel asks per file: overwrite or keep. Downloads stream single files directly, whatever their size.
Deleting moves to the Trash, not oblivion: deleted items go to a per-user trash area with their original location remembered, restorable for 30 days before automatic cleanup. Deleting five or more items at once and emptying the trash both demand typing DELETE; permanent deletion from trash asks for a regular confirmation.
Archives
Compress any selection to ZIP or TAR.GZ; extract handles zip, tar.gz/tgz, gz, tar.bz2 and, when the matching system tool is installed, rar and 7z (with the exact install command suggested if the tool is missing). Both run as streamed background jobs: a progress dialog shows the phase and percentage live, can be sent to the background while you keep working, and can be cancelled. Extraction offers conflict handling per run: overwrite, skip existing, or rename incoming.
Permissions and the editor
The Permissions dialog shows the rwx matrix for owner/group/other with octal and symbolic views, quick presets and an optional recursive apply for folders. Setuid/setgid bits are refused for everyone, and regular users cannot make files world-writable; ownership changes (chown) are reserved for ROOT and ADMIN, restricted to /home, and each home directory can only be assigned to its own user.
Double-clicking a text file opens the code editor: CodeMirror with syntax highlighting for PHP, JS/TS, HTML, CSS, Python, SQL, JSON, Markdown and more, search, code folding, bracket matching, word wrap and tab-width settings, a VS Code-style status bar with owner and permissions, and Ctrl+S to save. Image, PDF, video and audio files open in a preview dialog instead, with grid-view thumbnails for images.
What each role sees, concretely
The same page is four different tools depending on who opens it.
USER (a hosting customer, say john): the manager opens at /home/john and that is the entire universe. The folder tree's root is john's home, the address bar renders parent segments (/home, /) as unclickable gray, and typing or deep-linking a path outside the jail bounces back with a warning. What john actually sees inside is his hosting life: one folder per domain (example.com/public_html), mail/ for his mailboxes, app folders for his Node or Python apps. He can chmod his own files but cannot make anything world-writable (the 777 preset exists in the dialog and is refused server-side), and the ownership tab simply is not rendered for him.
RESELLER: opens at /home, but the listing is filtered: only the home directories of the reseller's own customers appear (server-side, via the accessible-directories check, so it holds even against hand-typed paths). Inside a customer's home the reseller works with the same file powers as a user, including the same world-writable and ownership restrictions.
ADMIN: also opens at /home, seeing the users in their own created-by chain. Unlike resellers, admins get the ownership (chown) tab, restricted to /home and to each directory's rightful owner, and may set permissions up to 777.
ROOT: opens at / and can browse the actual server: /etc, /var, /usr, other users' homes. Two exceptions hold even for ROOT: the panel's own /opt/panelica tree is invisible and untouchable (it does not even appear when listing /opt), and sensitive paths (shadow/passwd, SSH and SSL private material, /root) refuse reading and writing, while critical drop-ins such as cron directories and sudoers refuse writing.
With High Security Mode: this page is on the panel's protected-pages list. When a ROOT operator enables High Security Mode under Security, opening the File Manager without a fresh 2FA verification confines even ROOT to /home, with a banner explaining why and linking to 2FA setup; verifying the session with a current 2FA code restores full filesystem access. With the mode off (the default), ROOT browsing is unrestricted. This exists for the "stolen ROOT session" scenario: a hijacked cookie alone no longer reads /etc.
When the license lacks the feature: the page renders behind the standard premium-feature overlay instead of hiding, so operators can see what an upgrade adds.
O_NOFOLLOW, and the boundary check compares whole path components so /home/al can never masquerade as /home/alice. Files created, uploaded, copied or extracted under a user's home are automatically chowned to that user, so nothing a customer manages is ever left root-owned. Deletion refuses structural targets outright: a user's home itself, an active domain's directory and its ssl/logs/public_html cores cannot be deleted even by ROOT. File operations (create, rename, move, copy, delete, upload, edit) land in a file audit log.Access
Behind the file_manager license feature, with fine-grained permission keys for the individual operations (create, upload, download, rename, copy, move, delete, edit, compress, extract, permissions view, trash view and more), enforced again server-side. The same file API is available externally under files:* scopes.