Selfhosted @lemmy.world nopersonalspace @lemmy.world 1 yr. ago

Way for non-technical users to upload to my server with resumability

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)

29 comments

Sounds like you could use an old fashioned FTP server
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.
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)
  
  Maybe install the nextcloud client on his PC and have him copy over the files there. The Nextcloud client has sync and resume functionality and you don't have to watch it like a hawk. It just does it's thing in the background.
  
  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
  
  browser-based 'clients' with large directories and large numbers of files in a single multi-file upload are going to choke. you need binary bits on the parents' end, such as a dedicated backup or sync utility.
  
  if you could populate your server with their existing files using a physical drive, that would be better, and perhaps faster and easier, too--then a browser-based upload solution could probably handle the much smaller 'updates' of new stuff. have them consolidate all the existing files on one external (plus also on a second for a local backup). hell, you could do that bit via remote desktop and all they'd need to do is connect the drives and let you in. then somehow get one of those drives to you (ship, deliver, you pick up. whatever is feasible).
Would Syncthing work for you?
- It's not really the workflow I was imagining for this, but it might actually not be a bad idea. It might be a bit weird to use, but if I setup a "drop folder" on his machine that he could plop folders/files into then maybe it could work. Thanks!
  
  Do you want the entirety of a directory system uploaded? If that’s the case you could use syncthing to just share the source directory. Then your dad wouldn’t have to move anything. Add in something like Tailscale or ZeroTier and you could control all the syncthing settings from the webui.
  
  Glad to help 👍
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.
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.
When I've had need of collecting files from someone, I've normally thrown up a FileBrowser instance. Pretty sure it's not resume-able though.
Down this way there be dragons.
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).
Maybe Transfer.sh does what you need?
https://github.com/dutchcoders/transfer.sh/#docker
- Transfer.sh seems cool enough, but I'd rather avoid having to coach non-technical folks on how to use the command line
  
  I'm pretty sure it also has a web interface where you can drag and drop files
  
  Edit: after a second look I can't find anything like that. I swear I saw it somewhere...
  
  There's also Jirafeau, but I can't speak for any continuation of uploads
I would just use a backup tool to get everything on the computer.

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