Recommendations based on personal experience, please.
I have used a self-hosted Zend.to server for end to end encrypted async large file transfers with an easy to use web ui (sending files to others, and inviting others to send large files to me) for years now.
Aside from nextcloud, are there good options for doing this?
Requirements:
FOSS
not open-to-world
easy install/maintenance (no docker, pypi, yarn, etc.)
friendly to non-tech users in corporate environments
@neil I am glacially setting up a self-hosted SeaFile server and it seems fine so far, with Caddy as a reverse proxy. Since it's not as feature-rich as Nextcloud, it's also much lighter.
@neil I ran Seafile for a while. It ticks all the boxes you mention (assuming you consider docker compose counts as easy installation!), although it does a whole load of other stuff too and so might be a bit overkill for what you want.
I don't understand it well enough, mainly. And the times I've used it, I've almost always run into networking issues that I haven't been able to resolve.
Server application development is increasingly moving to it because it ensures the development environment and production are the same and it makes it easy to spin up the environments you need.
What were you trying to do from a network perspective? The point of docker compose is to setup the private network and bridge to the hosts network, so its weird it wouldn't work
@stevecrox@neil@hedders One of my issues with docker is that more and more projects seem to ship without a Dockerfile and say something like "simply docker pull dockerhub.io/blahblah."
To me that is no better than running an arbitrary binary on my system. If I can't build the docker image myself from an audited (or even better, self-written) Dockerfile, I'm not interested.
@losttourist Is that a criticism of docker per se though? Or is it more just a slightly different manifestation of the long-standing trade off between ease of distribution and installation vs auditability and traceability? Is docker inherently different, or worse, than installing software binaries from an .rpm or .deb or what have you?
(This is a genuine question by the way - I'm a lawyer, not an engineer, and although I have a decent proficiency in computing I'm not an expert!)
@hedders No there's nothing new or special about Docker in that regard. I'm very much in favour of giving a choice of installation methods - for example the Mastodon project has instructions on how to install onto bare metal (or more likely, a Virtual Host these days) as well as a simpler "or just run these docker containers" option.
It's when the only option is "hey this setup is complicated so we haven't documented it, just run these docker containers instead" that I feel it's moving away from the spirit of FOSS, even if strictly speaking the source code is available.
@neil I have not used it at all. I know some media outlets were offering it for leaks. I am not keen believer of e2e on web based applications. I am too lazy to dig into their tech sheets but it feels like compromise when the key management is invisible to user for sake of convenience. My bias. I used to have a nextcloud with a upload only link published on my office page declaring it's shortcomings in security. Server side encryption enabled and called a day.
@neil I’ve used magic wormhole a fair bit at work, and it has been extremely useful in some specific areas but it isn’t a general purpose file sharing platform. It does the e2e transmission thing and basically nothing else.
@neil Everyone can upload anything and then send the link to another, either from you to others or others to you (with the bonus that if you host it, it’s on your hard drive too). But that’s not like NextCloud, it’s more like WeTransfer, I guess.
But I use it for the type of case that you’ve explained, so…
@breizh I'll take a look, but the emphasis on shell and no screenshot of the web ui for users to upload files, or information on end to end encryption, makes me doubtful that it is a match.
@neil Oh yeah, I totally missed the E2E encryption need, sorry --’ (and yeah, the default interface isn’t necessarily the easiest to understand). There is none on this service.
@neil (I don’t use Javascript-based E2E because if you don’t trust the network, then HTTPS is there. If you don’t trust the server, then why do you trust the javascript coming from it? But I guess there is other cases than mine)
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