this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
64 points (94.4% liked)

Selfhosted

44442 readers
725 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

On occasion I find myself needing to send a file at least a few gigabytes in size to a friend across our slow ISPs but haven't found a satisfying solution. I usually end up creating a private torrent with the announce address of my own IP. Even though it's slow - it basically never reaches my max upload speed for some reason, it is at least resilient if there are ever any network glitches.

Does anyone else face this same challenge?

EDIT: Thank you for the awesome suggestions! I have some homework to do on these

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 0x0@programming.dev 1 points 27 minutes ago

You can OnionShare if you're worried about privacy.

[–] monogram@feddit.nl 6 points 4 hours ago
[–] fubarx@lemmy.world 14 points 8 hours ago
[–] Retro_unlimited@lemmy.world 10 points 10 hours ago

Before I moved I used to use my web server.

My Domain . Com / files . Zip And I would set a password on the zip. After they download it, they tell me and I remove the file.

[–] Typewar@infosec.pub 8 points 10 hours ago

Me and my friend used netcat to transfer 30 GB of files put into a zip. Very fun, would not recommend

[–] ohshit604@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 hours ago

Upload to Proton Drive > Create share link > Share link

[–] bigDottee@geekroom.tech 7 points 12 hours ago

I’d have to have friends across the internet that wanted files first…

[–] Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca 6 points 11 hours ago

FileBrowser

Create share links allowing anyone with the link (+ optional password) to browse and download individual files, or whole folder contents.

If someone needs to send me a file, I can create a user for them in a few seconds; so they can upload to that as well.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 5 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (2 children)

Friends I know IRL: Thumbdrives.

Friends I only know via the Internet: Torrents or IRC filesharing.

Though knowing that a homing pigeon with a thumb drive is actually faster than the fastest Internet network on the planet, maybe I should simply invest in a coop and some pigeons. 🤔

[–] Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.com 3 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Though knowing that a homing pigeon with a thumb drive is actually faster than the fastest Internet network on the planet

Depends on how big the flash drive is, I suppose. Need to send a 1GB file? Just make a torrent. Need to send 40TB? Yeah, that hard drive is getting driven across town.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 7 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Perhaps two pigeons could carry the hard drive on a string. I've heard tell of swallows that have done this with coconuts.

[–] brighteast@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Exactly what kind of pigeons are we talking about here? Or would you recommend switching to an avian variant of the migratory type?

[–] plim@feddit.dk 13 points 15 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Brunette6256@sh.itjust.works 2 points 8 hours ago

Wormhole or croc

[–] TheFinn@discuss.tchncs.de 26 points 18 hours ago (14 children)
load more comments (14 replies)
[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 9 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

Super easy. Spin up an OpenVPN server, forwarding the right ports to your server. Now spin up an Apache server with the folder your file’s in as server root. Send the client config for your VPN to your friend, along with the local address of your HTTP server. Now they can install the OpenVPN client on their PC and download the file from your HTTP server. Once you’re done, tear down all your servers, and don’t forget to unforward the ports. Couldn’t be easier.

/s

[–] admin@lemmy.haley.io 11 points 14 hours ago

I have non-ironically gotten responses like this

[–] Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 3 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

Okay can you explain why thats a sarcastic answer? Is one of those first three steps way harder than I think it is?

[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 12 points 14 hours ago

Cause that’s not simple or easy at all. It takes a fair bit of knowledge to set up all of these things.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 5 points 14 hours ago

openvpn and apache can be very time consuming to set up if you do it for the first time

[–] grimer@lemmy.world 5 points 13 hours ago

I literally just set up a container for Erugo for this exact thing. It worked perfectly and was super easy to do. It's just a self-hosted version of wetransfer. Could be helpful...

[–] Knossos@lemmy.world 15 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

You could try wormhole. It makes a direct connection.

[–] eight_byte@feddit.org 7 points 16 hours ago

Or croc which is very similar. I think it also allows to resume file transfers.

I used vaultwarden just the other day for this purpose. I mean, I use vaultwarden daily as a password manager, but it also has secure file transfer.

[–] manicdave@feddit.uk 5 points 14 hours ago

I'd go for syncthing over nextcloud for your specific usecase. Nextcloud isn't good for unreliable connections and they're sticking with the annoying decision of not supporting server to server synchronization.

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 12 hours ago

If its a file from my seedbox: Direct share link (optional pw)
Local file: OneDrive

[–] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

I've used:

https://send.tresorit.com/

https://wormhole.app/

https://pairdrop.net/

But for slower connections bittorrent is the best option by far because it doesn't care about interruptions, and verifies the data as it goes. Just gotta make sure you're port forwarding the client.

[–] deprecateddino@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago
[–] zewm@lemmy.world 6 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

If they are local, you can just put it on a thumb drive and physically transfer it.

[–] AtariDump@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago

If they’re not local, you can put it on a pen drive and mail it to them.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 6 points 16 hours ago
[–] JRaccoon@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 16 hours ago

My use case is a bit different than yours but still worth mentioning, I think; I have Sharry running in Docker and it makes sharing and receiving files super easy. All downloads and uploads are resumable so they work well even in unstable networks.

[–] MightyCuriosity@sh.itjust.works 3 points 15 hours ago
load more comments
view more: next ›