what tool to simply share files (no owncloud/nextcloud)

[John Doe]

hi all,

i would like to do some file sharing without VPN, so that someone can access it from the WAN.
I am very concerned regarding cyber security and now looking for a good way forward. I hope you can give me some suggestions.

What I want:
access via browser
centralized
no sync function required
tiny and fast
just to drop files/ video etc. on it from remote or give access to someone to download/ upload

I actually do not want to go with dropbox, nextcloud, owncloud, as it would be an overkill.
Tried minio (Min.io)which seems to be great for my purpose but it seems not to be proper developed. Buckets cannot be deleted from gui, in case I share seed and key, everyone has admin rights...

so I basically search for an alternative to minio, good engineered, GUI, streamlined and secure to use it within a vm

any Suggestion, advises, ideas?

 

[thewizard]

Rather than re-invent the wheel what about plain old FTP? Been around forever, supported by FreeNAS very easily. Google FreeNAS FTP and your version. How you expose that to the internet isn't really a FreeNAS issue more a router/network config one. FTP is great supports the concept of users, passwords etc. you control you can do what. Most browsers support it out of the box, but then open source free tools like FileZilla exist as well if you want a more robust FTP client.

 

[garm]

FTP should only be used to serve public data and nothing else. Why not use Nextcloud?

 

[blanchet]

Unfortunately, there is no serious alternative to Nextcloud or owncloud for your needs.

New competitors are emerging, but they are not easier to setup (they require Apache, PHP and MySQL)

• pydio
• seafile

For code sharing, there are tiny alternatives to gitlab, like gitea, but for file sharing, there are no such alternatives yet.

 

[John Doe]

thanks for proposing pydio, seems it can cover my needs!

I want to use 443 port (if i am correct https) no other port is allowed. So i think FTP is out.
Sensitive data shall be transmitted and classic ftp is not secured (as far as I know)

nextcloud/owncloud is not an option, because no sync space on clients available, in general, syncing something is not needed.

is any security test known for pydio (pen test etc.)? I am still worried to open a port to the outside world.

 

[blanchet]

I have never used neither pydio nor seafile because I am still happy with owncloud. I have just found them on alternativeto.net

When using a web browser, you can use owncloud without sync space. In this case owncloud is very similar to dropbox. You just drag and drop files from your desktop (Linux, Mac or Windows). In my company, we use owncloud to share files with our suppliers and our customers. It works very well, even with big files (50G). We run it on a CentOS 7 virtual machine with 2 vCPUS and 3 GB of RAM to serve 100 users.
Owncloud is not very difficult to install especially if you use only local accounts. On the other hand, configuring Active Directory authentication can be tricky.

 

[garm]

Ya I would say Active Directory is the bigger challenge, but not needed for small deployments. Installing and maintaining Nextcloud is fairly straight forward, especially with @danb35 ’s script

 

[blanchet]

It may be more secure to run owncloud/nextcloud in a bhyve vm instead of a jail, because, you cannot configure easily firewall on FreeNAS jails. On the other hand, with a bhyve vm you can use a regular setup, for example FreeBSD_12+pf+fail2ban or Debian_10+nftables+fail2ban.