Self managed "file-sharing" solution

Support
1

I have a VPS with a mail server. Lately I have been thinking about using that VPS also for “sharing” files, i.e. for putting a file on my VPS and giving a link to that file on, for example, a forum that doesn’t allow attaching big files to your posts. (So as to void using services like rapidshare and similar).

So I don’t want to provide a file-sharing service myself, I just want anyone (without logging in) to be able to download the file the link to which I have given.

So my question is: what would be the simplest in configuration/least resource-hungry choice for this? Web-server? FTP-server with anonymous access? Which of web- or FTP-servers? Could you recommend something?

2

Hi @Kzer-Za,

I think your best option would be a private cloud server, like OwnCloud, for example.

However, if you do not wish to go through all the trouble, there are other options:

And others.

Hope this helps.

2 Likes
3

Since you posted this on Manjaro forum I assume you are running Manjaro as your operating system? The dead easy way to serve files is to run the Caddy fileserver (github).

$ sudo pacman -Syu caddy-bin

Then when you have a file to share - send it to the fileserver using ssh. Something like this

scp filename user@yourserver:/srv/caddy
2 Likes
4

Nextcloud and Owncloud are almost the same thing, they both require working LAMP.

What you are looking for can easily be done with any webserver (apache), just install it, start it and put a file in /srv/http/file.txt and you should be able to access it by calling IPAddress/file.txt in any browser.

Nextcloud is really nice, but it is way more complicated than what you are looking for and setup will take an afternoon. Plus, until they get Nextcloud 21 running, it is not wirking in Manjaro.
FTP is imo deprecated, dont use that.

2 Likes
5

I agree 100% with @Kessl.
Just wanted to add one thing.
True, Nextcloud is very nice. But, in case you are considering going that route, use the docker image!
You can thank me later, or maybe never, cause you won’t know what a shitshow you avoided by not doing a “bare metal” install (especially on a rolling distro). :smile:

1 Like
6

Thanks everyone for the advice!

I don’t want to get involved with LAMP since my VPS has very limited resources. But I gathered that the main idea is to use a web server. For now I decided to choose lighttpd, but I’m gonna give Caddy a thought in the future :slight_smile: