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.
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Opencloud is the was to go from the established systems in my opinion. https://github.com/opencloud-eu
File sharing and -management for me has a higher level of trust and stability requirements. Syncin with four developers and "doing everything" while based on typescript makes me suspicious - but I haven't tried it hands-on.
If you just want file sync, the obvious option is SyncThing. It's established and highly regarded.
It doesn't support ~~offline~~ online only files though. I can't dump a few hundred GB on there and then access it from my phone etc
I dont understand what you mean. As in that client a can dump files, go offline and client b can go onlineel and sync these files afterwards?
Sorry, brain fart moment.
I meant online only - the complete opposite of what I wrote ....
I want to be able to upload files and have them stored on the server and only downloaded when needed (or if I mark them as always downloaded)
I don't need or want everything on my laptop or phone (requires lots of storage!), but want to be able to get them easily when I do.
I don't want to sync files at all. I want files to only be on the server, accessible via web interface. Like Google Drive.
Maybe look onto OwnCloud. That's the project NextCloud was forked from many years ago. It's very much still around and had a very different philosophy, a much more minimalistic approach with focus on stability. That's actually the reason the people behind NextCloud had to fork it, cause all their additional features (bloat) wasn't accepted upstream.
Copyparty is awesome. You don't even need to sync you can just mount WebDAV
Surely awesome, but sync is one-side only. This is a nogo for my usecases.
Agreed, copyparty is awesome. However, the one obvious downside is that you lose guaranteed offline support (some clients may allow for it, but it's not baked in).
Nextcloud is way too bloated
It really isn't, though? What if you deploy it from source with just the modules you need and a tuned config for PHP/postgres?
I like NC and use it primarily for file sync. I think this would create a fragile maintenance nightmare for the sake of saving a few MB of storage and memory.
I have been in Nextcloud wagon for quite sometime, but latest versions or new features are not really in my use case. I just want a place to store my files and work with others (mostly family), nothing about AI assistants or the like.
With that said, I have a testing instance of Sync-in. So far is good, files are stored on my server and the structure makes it easy to backup (one of the reasons I dropped OpenCloud), collaboraCODE integration works really well, sharing spaces with family works OK.
The only missing feature is an Android client, like nextcloud, to store some files locally (something that you could need to be available and not be concerned about connectivity). As a workaround, I'm using syncthing (I'm aware of the android-app related drama, and that's why I would love to have an Android native client for Sync-in).
Hi,
I've been on seafile for years, I see no reason for the docker install to scare you.
I've been meaning to migrate to an european alternative (seafile is essentially chinese), but none seem to have the notion of zero-trust.
I've checked both opencloud and sync-in. In both cases, if you are the admin, you can access every one's files. For now at least. This means a hacker accessing your server could also get the files uncrypted.
This is a no-go for me, I want my friends to be able to trust my instance so they can use it. Seafile has that : you can create an encrypted collection which asks for a second password when you open it.
A very simple way to set up file access is to use SSHFS, mounting the drive via SFTP. It may not be as fast as other protocols but it is simple and requires minimal setup on your server.
https://github.com/winfsp/sshfs-win
https://github.com/libfuse/sshfs
Yeah, that's what I was doing before when it was just me. But, my wife isn't gonna wanna mount an SSHFS. It needs to work like Google Drive, meaning web interface.
I haven't tried Sync-in but if simple is what you want then a Synology DS225+ should get you up n running quickly.
https://www.androidpolice.com/synology-as-a-google-drive-alternative/
Which part of the seafile install was it that made you back off?
https://manual.seafile.com/latest/setup/setup_ce_by_docker/
but if simple is what you want then a Synology DS225+ should get you up n running quickly
Ah, I forgot to mention I'm already running my own Debian server. Ideally, I wouldn't have to buy another device just for online file management.
Which part of the seafile install was it that made you back off?
There's proxies behind proxies behind proxies that proxy to proxies so you can proxy while you proxy.
I managed to install half of it, but then some of the many servers you need to install didn't end up talking with each other. I tried studying the architecture for a bit, but still couldn't figure out which server's request I needed to rewrite in order for the other server to see it.