Lightweight on premise based file sharing for people outside of network

[mapleLC]

I need to securely share files with my accountants, lawyer, assistants, etc without a data whore or cloud based solution where the files are copied somewhere out of my control.  I do not want a terms of service sheet.

No cloud, intermediate hosting, etc.  Just something simple/light.

Ideally, I would put a file in the sharing location, and that file can be picked up by the user with the simplest of means.  A temp access key, temp login, etc, something along those lines.  No 3rd party logins, accounts, sharing, nothing.

Looking online there are options available, but I don't know any of them and so I am hoping the community has experience with this topic.

This link is along the lines of what I am exploring.

https://www.fossmint.com/open-source-cloud-file-sharing-platforms/

Alternatively, I thought about hosting a website on my home with apache, but I worry the ISP will balk at that kind of thing.

[tooki]

Soooooo… you want file sharing that is neither cloud based, nor on a hosting service, nor hosted locally? Ummmm… that doesn’t really leave any options that involve the internet.

I dunno, drive a hard drive to them? Tie a microsd card to a pigeon (IP over avian, aka feathernet)? Point to point dialup modem?

[Jackster]

Your ISP should not care. If hosting locally here are my suggestions.

The easiest is FTP. FileZilla server is free. Simple to create logins and end user can just copy and paste user:pass@ip/folder into their file folder viewer or web browser address bar to access files.

Apache is another easy one. .htaccess to create username and password. You will want to do this on a random port as bots will scan for port 80. Limited to downloading via web browser though.

SMB is not advisable even the latest versions afaik.

Alternatively, you can host your own web application that is designed for file sharing such as You transfer. It is an open source WeTransfer clone
https://github.com/YouTransfer/YouTransfer

[mapleLC]

Soooooo… you want file sharing that is neither cloud based, nor on a hosting service, nor hosted locally? Ummmm… that doesn’t really leave any options that involve the internet.

I dunno, drive a hard drive to them? Tie a microsd card to a pigeon (IP over avian, aka feathernet)? Point to point dialup modem?

I want to share files that I keep on premises with uses outside of my local network.  This would define the need as "hosted locally" as you put it.

[mapleLC]

Your ISP should not care. If hosting locally here are my suggestions.

The easiest is FTP. FileZilla server is free. Simple to create logins and end user can just copy and paste user:pass@ip/folder into their file folder viewer or web browser address bar to access files.

Apache is another easy one. .htaccess to create username and password. You will want to do this on a random port as bots will scan for port 80. Limited to downloading via web browser though.

SMB is not advisable even the latest versions afaik.

Alternatively, you can host your own web application that is designed for file sharing such as You transfer. It is an open source WeTransfer clone
https://github.com/YouTransfer/YouTransfer

ISPs are touchy when you are trying to play web server without $ for it.  Your FTP suggestion is my secondary option.  After a bit of research I am going to take a punt and:

Build an Unbutu virtual machine
Host Sandstorm
Install FileDrop, its the lightest weight thing I can find

I'll run the VM on a network PC and see how that goes for a little while.  In fact, this is the first pass as a complete transition to Linux away from Windows.  I was never a Macboy.

Be back to the thread with results

[SeanB]

Most ISP's use dynamic IP allocation, so there is no guaranteed IP to your home network, and often you also get at least one layer of NAT as well, so your home connection will be behind a NAT router before your own one, often two or more. You pay to have a static IP, so you will need to have a server somewhere in a data centre that, at a minimum, runs NAT traversal, which is a service offered by many, eg DynDNS, who will do the NAT traversal for you, so the local machine can be reached from anywhere, using the control to coordinate the NAT, and allow both sides to then communicate directly.

No way to do with a home connection, unless you pay for a public IP, which is typically a business grade connection.

[Jackster]

]

ISPs are touchy when you are trying to play web server without $ for it.  Your FTP suggestion is my secondary option.  After a bit of research I am going to take a punt and:

Build an Unbutu virtual machine
Host Sandstorm
Install FileDrop, its the lightest weight thing I can find

I'll run the VM on a network PC and see how that goes for a little while.  In fact, this is the first pass as a complete transition to Linux away from Windows.  I was never a Macboy.

Be back to the thread with results

You can install Docker on Windows and run a decent amount of containers on that. No need to then learn how to run Linux server.

Most ISP's use dynamic IP allocation, so there is no guaranteed IP to your home network, and often you also get at least one layer of NAT as well, so your home connection will be behind a NAT router before your own one, often two or more. You pay to have a static IP, so you will need to have a server somewhere in a data centre that, at a minimum, runs NAT traversal, which is a service offered by many, eg DynDNS, who will do the NAT traversal for you, so the local machine can be reached from anywhere, using the control to coordinate the NAT, and allow both sides to then communicate directly.

No way to do with a home connection, unless you pay for a public IP, which is typically a business grade connection.

One can use CloudFlare Tunnels to get around that. No need to expose one's IP and the ISP won't really be able to tell that the customer is running a web server.

Note that there is a 100MB limit when using CloudFlare. Other tunnelling services don't have this limit but then charge for the service.

[Marco]

FTP is dead, don't use it.

If you have an OpenWRT router, why not use that with dyndns and the built in web server?

[voltsandjolts]

Simple and secure....pick which one you want

[bingo600]

FTP is dead, don't use it.

I totally disagree ....
ftp/sftp is still a much used protocol , no matter what is being said.

And it's easy to host tour own server, especially if it's only for local/internal usage.

Is it eficcient ... Not compared to http(s) , but still widely used in ie VoIP Deskphone upgrades etc.


/Bingo

[tooki]

Soooooo… you want file sharing that is neither cloud based, nor on a hosting service, nor hosted locally? Ummmm… that doesn’t really leave any options that involve the internet.

I dunno, drive a hard drive to them? Tie a microsd card to a pigeon (IP over avian, aka feathernet)? Point to point dialup modem?

I want to share files that I keep on premises with uses outside of my local network.  This would define the need as "hosted locally" as you put it.

Well you ended the original post by dismissing that option:

Alternatively, I thought about hosting a website on my home with apache, but I worry the ISP will balk at that kind of thing.

[TomWinTejas]

Most ISP's use dynamic IP allocation, so there is no guaranteed IP to your home network, and often you also get at least one layer of NAT as well, so your home connection will be behind a NAT router before your own one, often two or more. You pay to have a static IP, so you will need to have a server somewhere in a data centre that, at a minimum, runs NAT traversal, which is a service offered by many, eg DynDNS, who will do the NAT traversal for you, so the local machine can be reached from anywhere, using the control to coordinate the NAT, and allow both sides to then communicate directly.

No way to do with a home connection, unless you pay for a public IP, which is typically a business grade connection.

ISPs don't care... some will block SMTP so you aren't a proxy for spam brokers, but most other ports are fair game.  Dynamic IPs are not a problem, dynamic DNS has solved this problem for decades.  There are many free options and most good home routers will support updates, if not whatever server you setup can do the updates.

I've run many services for family members for over ten years now all on dynamic IPs.... from IPSec VPN overlays to streaming video and file sharing.  For the OP, there are simple solutions to roll your own cloud services akin to Google Drive or Dropbox.  Nextcloud and ownCloud are the two most popular solutions.  They both support OAuth2 so you can leverage existing 2FA schemes or you can do your own authentication. 

[mapleLC]

]

ISPs are touchy when you are trying to play web server without $ for it.  Your FTP suggestion is my secondary option.  After a bit of research I am going to take a punt and:

Build an Unbutu virtual machine
Host Sandstorm
Install FileDrop, its the lightest weight thing I can find

I'll run the VM on a network PC and see how that goes for a little while.  In fact, this is the first pass as a complete transition to Linux away from Windows.  I was never a Macboy.

Be back to the thread with results

You can install Docker on Windows and run a decent amount of containers on that. No need to then learn how to run Linux server.

Most ISP's use dynamic IP allocation, so there is no guaranteed IP to your home network, and often you also get at least one layer of NAT as well, so your home connection will be behind a NAT router before your own one, often two or more. You pay to have a static IP, so you will need to have a server somewhere in a data centre that, at a minimum, runs NAT traversal, which is a service offered by many, eg DynDNS, who will do the NAT traversal for you, so the local machine can be reached from anywhere, using the control to coordinate the NAT, and allow both sides to then communicate directly.

No way to do with a home connection, unless you pay for a public IP, which is typically a business grade connection.

One can use CloudFlare Tunnels to get around that. No need to expose one's IP and the ISP won't really be able to tell that the customer is running a web server.

Note that there is a 100MB limit when using CloudFlare. Other tunnelling services don't have this limit but then charge for the service.

I actually want to learn Linux.  I am exiting all Microsoftski and Apple pc type products.  Have you see the mess the latest windows os is?  What a data mine.


VPN... interesting thought.

[girishv]

I need to securely share files with my accountants, lawyer, assistants, etc without a data whore or cloud based solution where the files are copied somewhere out of my control.  I do not want a terms of service sheet.

No cloud, intermediate hosting, etc.  Just something simple/light.

Ideally, I would put a file in the sharing location, and that file can be picked up by the user with the simplest of means.  A temp access key, temp login, etc, something along those lines.  No 3rd party logins, accounts, sharing, nothing.

Looking online there are options available, but I don't know any of them and so I am hoping the community has experience with this topic.

This link is along the lines of what I am exploring.

https://www.fossmint.com/open-source-cloud-file-sharing-platforms/

Alternatively, I thought about hosting a website on my home with apache, but I worry the ISP will balk at that kind of thing.

You can consider using NextCloud on premise. The features are bit sparse, but, fairly easy to setup and manage.

If your ISP has provided you a publicly accessible IP address, you can setup NAT on your router to expose the on-premise server to external users. If you don't have a publicly accessible IP address or for some reason cannot setup NAT on your router, you can use Cloudflare ZeroTrust Tunnel.

Checkout the documentation at https://developers.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-one/connections/connect-apps/

[magic]

If you want secure and FTP/HTTP, certainly don't run them unencrypted.

[girishv]

If you want secure and FTP/HTTP, certainly don't run them unencrypted.

One should consider using Certbot for free SSL certificates for web server. Certbot offers free SSL certificates which can be renewed perpetually. Checkout https://certbot.eff.org/ for more instructions.

If you use Clouldfare, ZeroTrust Tunnel handles encryption transparently. You will get a verified certificate for HTTP server out of the box.

Note: I am not promoting Cloudfare or Certbot. I have been using Cloudfare and Certbot as part of my IT infrastructure solutions and my association is only as an end user.