Ask HN: “lofi” File Share for personal, team usage

20 点作者 dv35z超过 2 年前

The Team File Share. AKA “How is this still an unsolved problem?”In 2004, I worked at a bank, and our team had a “P:/“ drive. It was a networked file share (probably Windows Server), mounted on everyone’s computer. Turns out, several members of the team were meticulous organizers, and would even leave notes at top-level folders - an index & guidance on what to put there, how to name files, and so on. Loved it, and did my best to keep things tidy and easy to find. What’s great is the whole file structure was browsable in a Browser (eg visiting p://marketing/events/2022-09-05 - Lunch & Learn/ would show the Apache-style index page, containing html links to files in that directory. Sharing a file with a colleage was as simple as sending the URL. When we wanted to share files externally, we had an FTP fileshare you could drag files to, and the URL was also predictable (http://external-example.com/marketing/events/teaser.mp4)I was brainstorming today, and was wondering, what’s a modern setup of the above?I’ve been experimenting with Dropbox & Google Drive with “fresh eyes”… so many frustrations, especially on iOS. It’s either you’re using their apps directly (annoying UI for both), or iOS File.app. But half the time, Dropbox isn’t “connected” (?) - in today’s case I had to update the Dropbox app & re-authenticate thru their app before the files were available in Files. It all seemed so silly of a disruption from such an essential tool of my file: my digital files!Are there any “so simple, it feels like we are in a 2004 office” file share solutions?A few requirements (feel free to m suggest other (need/wants), in the comments)… - I can access my files on my computer (Finder, terminal) and phone (iOS, using Files.app) - Files are automatically backed up (hourly/daily/weekly) - I can read & write to files when there is no network service (eg while in NYC subway), and they’ll sync back up (SyncThing?) - Private files are secure. On a personal fileshare, I ought to be able to store health records, financial records, sensitive notes & files. The “me” stuff. The family drive would have kids health records and so on. (the first solution that came to mind is “encrypted, password protected disk image, hosted on a fileshare in a VPC, only accessible when logged into VPN; and then accessible thru iOS Files.app?)For Work, I ought to have “my drive” (eg example.com/~me/projects/, and “team drive”, also a private work area m (pay statements, notes from 1:1s / boss, etc) - Fileshare. I ought to be able to be able to drag a file over to pub-fileshare, and it’s accessible to anyone with the URL. Or protected-fileshare, where certain folders have passwords (or some other securing mechanism, since who wants to remember more passwords…?What’s the state of the art / tool stack of a “lofi” fileshare setup?Imagine you were setting this up for (1) yourself (2) a best friend (3) family (4) small work teamWhat solution might actually last 10+ years?

12 条评论

pid-1超过 2 年前

OneDrive, Dropbox and Google Drive have worked perfectly for me over the years. There are like 1000s of file sharing apps and protocols with every imaginable flavour. I guess your issue is related to using iOS, which is a walled garden, not a solution not existing.

toast0超过 2 年前

I use a samba shared drive with my family. Shortcuts on the desktop, there's a top level folder 'sharing', a script on the server monitors for changes to that folder, and rsyncs to external hosting, plus updates a list.txt that has a url for each file (it's predictable, but the txt file updating also lets you know it's working).There's also a recipies folder which has a similar script that builds an html + a tad bit of javascript so it's easy to read those files from a browser; useful for looking up ingredients while at the store, etc.

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speedylight超过 2 年前

I occasionally find myself in this situation where I want to get image.jpeg or file.txt from one device to another but Bluetooth isn’t an option (thanks Tim Apple) or a USB drive, I didn’t want to have to upload those files to a cloud service then back to my laptop, because my upload speed is terrible, and also privacy concerns. The easiest solution that I came up with is using my Rasberry Pi as a bridge with an SFTP client, which is really just an SSH session with the benefit of being able to transfer files, and also execute system commands like you would a normal SSH connection.The way I use it is very manual and hacky, but it works since it only happens every once in a while. But my point is you can use your own hardware to run an SFTP or a normal FTP server, NextCloud instance, or even one of those prebuilt NAS drives. And if you don’t want to manage your own hardware, you can use a Digital Ocean droplet to do the same thing albeit with monthly payments, but it’s not like running your own hardware is free.There’s no shortage of options and you certainly aren’t limited to what I mentioned, but it’s good place to start so you can find what works best for you.

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n3storm超过 2 年前

Nextcloud. WebDAV (a standard) or offline sync. If you don't mess with document and spreadsheet editors Nextcloud can remain lo-fi

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thunderbong超过 2 年前

I find 'Http File Server' [0] invaluable in this regard. It's literally just drag and drop of folders.The only thing is you got to let everyone know of your IP address. But mostly that's a one time exercise.[0]: <a href="http://www.rejetto.com/hfs/" rel="nofollow">http://www.rejetto.com/hfs/</a>

tomjen3超过 2 年前

The system you described sounds nice, until I either: need to share one file without sharing the tree above it, or somebody fixes a spelling issue anywhere in the tree above any shared file.Shareing a file can be as simple as sharing a request to HR for something.

rejectfinite超过 2 年前

Windows AD domains and FTP still exists.I feel like Teams/Sharepoint in Office 365 does this. Make a "Team" and you get a Sharepoint site. Just put folders and files in. Inv ppl in the org. Can share externally and you get a link.For personal use? idk>What solution might actually last 10+ years?FTP still actually, lol

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rcarmo超过 2 年前

Samba still works (including with iOS). Will likely be your 10-year solution.If you need offline syncing, OneDrive and SyncThing have worked fine for me for the past couple of years (there is even an iOS SyncThing app, which I use sparingly).

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thdxr超过 2 年前

been using syncthing to represent my entire "state" for years nowit's not perfect, pretty much needs a central server you manageI've tried every combo of solution that involves mounting Google drive and they all end up being glitchy

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yewenjie超过 2 年前

rsync mount works with many cloud drives, which seems like a starting point to me. However, I have not used it enough collaboratively to have a strong opinion.

kkfx超过 2 年前

Personally, and I can't name a tool for you, I consider that:- files&folder taxonomies are limited. Sometimes a file should be in more than one place, there are links/symlinks but no "backlinks" so it's easy top break things and filenames are not much good for search. Essentially a path in a file&folder classic taxonomy is a kind of limited and limited query to reach some content;- notes are another interesting things: ALL documents are kind of notes. The fact we have many file formats and apps just to craft document is more a limit and an issue of modern systems that a reasonable thing.Given the above two consideration I decide for myself to org-attach almost anything. The complete setup is:- org-roam, org-ql (with a semi-curated catalog to make queries and yasnippets to ensure consistency) and ripgrep as access layer, witch practically means hitting a single key on my keyboard and start typing something. In 99% of the case I get "the good answer" (something already done or new content to add), sometimes I need rg/recoll because just heading/tags search do not work and in that case I adjust/add some roam_aliases to easy mach the content in the future. Sometimes I need queries to work on things, like "check all active contracts" or "current issue" or "last three days notes" etc;- org-attach and links and dired to craft small "secondary-level file hierarchies" as a storage management layers, something that hide my real home taxonomy (essentially just notes on one root, other files managed by org-attach under another in a cache-like tree) I access via links;- various org-mode extras to link different kind of stuff I can't org-attach properly, like mails (individual messages, threads, search queries on my mails etc), transactions (hledger via org-babel), mere elisp:(sexp) code to be executed live on click.Doing so allow me to IGNORE a limited and limited hierarchy, allow crafting dynamic hierarchies as results from SQL-alike (albeit limited and slow) queries, accessing most of the content in search&narrow style something proven to be effective in most kind of UI from search engines to "dashes" instead of "menus" etc and allow to blend a bit most kind of docs in a single "document"/page/live environment witch is VERY useful since we have a single mind, not really compartmentalized and we need different kind of "docs" together often.This is IMVHO how we should manage files in 2022 BUT since Emacs and classic desktop model for commercial and ignorance reasons is essentially dead it's not something ready out-of-the-box and not something designed for collaboration. It's just a personal HYPER-effective solution that might wrap&hide far less effective one used by collaborators still allowing interaction.The modern equivalent, far more limited, complex and heavyweight is a DMS (see Nuxeo, Alfresco, ...) mostly crappy WebUIs that wrap Apache Jackrabbit behind the scene and add some forms/tags/ways to classify documents in various "dynamic" and "less constrained" ways. With a bit of hesitation for a small team <a href="https://www.tagspaces.org" rel="nofollow">https://www.tagspaces.org</a> is less crazy to setup and use. Othe simpler but probably too limited options are <a href="https://github.com/filebrowser/filebrowser" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/filebrowser/filebrowser</a> or <a href="https://cloudcmd.io/" rel="nofollow">https://cloudcmd.io/</a> or <a href="https://filerun.com/" rel="nofollow">https://filerun.com/</a> or <a href="https://www.seafile.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.seafile.com/</a> or <a href="https://tabbles.net/" rel="nofollow">https://tabbles.net/</a> some are proprietary and all are not much more than classic file browsers served via webapp on a file-server backend storage instead of a local one.

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Theodores超过 2 年前

Related: my latest discovery is Thunderbolt networking.I have my main machine with everything on and my personal machine I use for testing and web browsing. They both have access to the same files at warp speed. If I then disconnect I can use wifi or I can use the internet.The lack of latency enables keyboard/mouse sharing across my two machines to work seamlessly. Finding files is at native speeds.The two machines 'research' and 'development' on their little Thunderbolt connection backup with rsnapshot to a low power NUC that just does backups and hosts 'assets' (images).The assets sync with rsync to their respective project folders, the rest of the project is updated on a per machine basis with version control and deployment scripts.I have the home router accessible by FQDN with reserved MAC addresses and port forwarding. This sits behind a CDN that is there to fend off any unwelcome visitors as well as to experiment with content delivery. It is my take on a locked down 'origin server'.If you setup all of the networking options, for example NFS, SSHFS and SAMBA then you can create a network that can be used by wider members of the team working from home. For example art workers.If you have buy in from the artworkers then consider NextCloud etc.I run certbot on the local machines, so everything is https FQDN rather than IP addresses.Motivation for this setup is in part ease of testing on mobile. I have no use case for wanting to ssh in or browse my file system from my phone.I do not like using a VPN and setting up OpenVPN is not something I enjoy. I like UFW, bare metal, mod security, public/private key and generally upping my security game without there being passwords. I have 2FA for lots of things now.I can share my work in development without it being on the official staging server, I can even check the logs to see if interest has been expressed.For email I don't trust myself to maintain and update that bale of Postfix and all the rest of it. Not bothering with email (I run mailhog) is a good way to cop out of building a full beast of a server.I use JetBrains Space to keep organised. It does lots of things that mean I can access my todo list and glorified bookmarks, not to mention repos, anywhere including on my phone to some extent.This means that I don't really have to use a dropbox clone. I have a single source of truth on my backup server for the 'assets' that need to by rsynced across places. I can casually surf my LAN wherever I am or do things in my IDE with a ssh mounted drive if I need to get to the /etc folder (which is not shared).Soft links are your friends, as are hard links.By all means setup something that does every possible scenario, however, you might find it is just going to be people in the wider team that need a Dropbox feature, normal backups with rsnapshot work great, rsync with its options to exclude stuff is good for sharing to development environments in combination with version control. With router configuration and FQDN you can make this work elegantly. Finally, Thunderbolt networking in your own home is a good way to use your personal machine to test your work at silly speeds.

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