Is there an app I can self-host that will let users upload stuff to my server? I need something where I can send a link to someone, and they can upload files & folders to my server (it doesn’t matter much to me where, as long as I can transfer them out to wherever I need later).
For example, I’m working to archive my parents’ family photos which right now live on a bunch of external HDDs. I need a way for my (non-technical) father to be able to upload a folder with potentially 10k plus files to my server. Because of his poor internet reliability, and the potentially large size, I need something that has resumability (so that if it fails, it can pick up where it left off and not re-start from scratch)
Security-wise, it would be nice to be able to only have uploads work when I send a link. Other than that, I’m not worried about malicious uploads or anything.
Does anyone have any recommendations for this? (Or, if nothing exists, would folks find this useful? I might end up making it if I can’t find it)
Sounds like you could use an old fashioned FTP server
Try out sharry. Sharry is a self-hosted file sharing web application.
It works pretty well for my use cases. I also like the alias feature, what is pretty much what you are searching for. The only thing I miss, is the possibility to download a share as a zip folder. But there is an open issue for it, so maybe it will be added in future (again).
I use pingvin to share files for non technical ppl, but i don’t think it’s made for your case.
Maybe syncthing would work.
Filebrowser, it’s a basic web interface you can drag files into.
But if he needs to upload a lot of files like 10k plus, then that’s not going to work well. Instead Syncthing would be the best option. It will automatically handle resuming uploads, and you can set a bandwidth limit so it doesn’t cause bufferbloat from upload saturation.
There is NextCloud. It has the possibility to create an upload link where people can upload stuff. We use it daily to receive stuff from our customers.
If you need the resuming part, you would be better off giving them a NextCloud account and share a folder. Their NextCloud app will sync it in the background and resume automatically.
Down this way there be dragons.
I would just use a backup tool to get everything on the computer.
Take a look at NextCloud - very easy to host and has great user management and sharing.
There are also a good amount of apps that are one click integration if you need to expand on functionality.
Thanks! I already use NextCloud and quite like it! Hover, I find their file upload feature to be lacking for this use-case. Sadly, it crashes/freezes the browser when I try to upload a folder with a lot of files (which is the main thing I’ll need to do with this)
If you’re doing the uploads yourself, the fastest solution for large files (e.g. compress into a tar/7z) will be rsync.
It requires minimal setup (ssh or vpn connection) and uses chunk transfer which is typically faster and can be resumed in event of connection failures
I love rsync, and also have been using croc a lot recently for similar stuff. It’s not really feasible for non-technical users who don’t even want to think about using a terminal though.
