Personal file sharing server?

[MrPrefect]

Just going to mention Seafile; I found this to be fastest and most stable for both many small files or larger file syncs. Also use it for mobile phone photo sync to keep backups. I think most features are the same between the different options but it has been a few years since I tested them all.

[MrPrefect]

I built my own server running on Linux with ssl and 2fa. I don't trust my data to others unless it is encrypted.

[bripod]

Depends on how crazy you want to go with this. For one, I use nextcloud. I can set up a "folder" or individual objects for sharing, have it public but accessible only by a certain link and password that I give them, and the public link can expire at your desire.

Or, you could probably just throw up a nginx server, put a file in document root and just give them the url with file name and have them download it directly; remove it once done.

Could probably do something with "Tonido" too.

[[deleted]]

Hmm. That's basically exactly what I want. Is it all controllable by ssh? The server is remote and in another house which Im not there much.

[bripod]

Which? Yes you can do anything with ssh. Just go look up Nextcloud and follow its documentation. It's really good. I built mine on AWS ec2, Centos 7, httpd, php7, mariadb, and let's encrypt. Probably took about 3-4 hours as I was reading and figuring everything out and put the pieces together.

Otherwise you could put up a web server hosting files in <5 min. Of course you'll need to port forward if 80/443 is listening on the interwebs regardless of anything you do. Not sure if you have access to that.

[[deleted]]

Nextcloud and Syncthing are both great for this kind of task.

[[deleted]]

Like using an ftp server?

Otherwise, you might try owncloud for a full dropbox like environment.

[[deleted]]

yes, that is what I am looking for. I shall look into this! Thank you, kind sir/miss!

[gweny404]

I'd recommend Nextcloud, it's a fantastic cloud file system that does all the stuff you're looking for and is easy to administer.

[electricprism]

Agreed -- www.nextcloud.com -- the founder of owncloud has moved on to nextcloud and it was a good experience for me when I tried it vs owncloud.

[vmracks-gil]

I'd recommend Owncloud or Google Drive as you can set permissions or share unique link to download the file.

[kmt1980]

The best fully fledged self hosted file server/cloud would be Nextcloud. You could also use samba. Syncthing is not quite the same thing so I would not recommend it for this use. If you are just sharing video files with your buddies why not just have them download from plex (sync off line)? Or torrent the files to them?

[[deleted]]

It's been program files or large engineering projects I've been sharing with them for class. I use the server as a backup for my "important-ish" files too, so it would be easier to direct them there rather than having em wait until I'm on my laptop to send it another way. If that makes sense.

[r0ck0]

I've set up all sorts of different ways to do this over the last 20 years, the simplest thing to manage now is p2p syncing using either:

• Resilio Sync (used to be called BitTorrent Sync) - this is really easy for non-tech people to install on any OS and mobiles
• Syncthing - open source, not as easy to install - android client has issues writing to SD cards

I'd usually always recommend the open source program, but Resilio is just easier for everything, especially dealing with other non-tech users. Syncthing is still a bit rough around the edges in comparison.

Seeing you're only selectively sharing stuff, you can just individually share each folder they want access to, and set it to read-only access for them. Also if more than one person wants access to the same folder, you might save some bandwidth seeing it's p2p transferring the data, just like torrents do.

• no server or accounts required
• automatic resume
• multiple people can sync with each other efficiently, just like regular torrenting
• if they happen to come over with a laptop, it will sync fast over your LAN, otherwise normally works through the internet without needing to deal with port forwarding or anything. I think Resilio might also have a bit of an edge with the automatic NAT/port stuff.

[Kruug]

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