I made a video about copyparty, the selfhosted fileserver I’ve been making for the past 5 years.

The main focus of the video is the features, but it also touches upon configuration. Was hoping it would be easier to follow than the readme on github… not sure how well that went, but hey :D

This video is also available to watch on the copyparty demo server, as a high-quality AV1 file and a lower-quality h264.

    • boonhet@sopuli.xyzEnglish
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      2 months ago

      You can run absolutely anything as a docker container that you have the binary (and other files if needed), or you can go fancy and compile from source in docker.

      Just create a dockerfile.

      From (some base image you want to use like Ubuntu or Alpine)

      Copy necessary files

      Run the binary

      You can run it straight from command line, put it in a docker compose file, or even tag it and upload it to a repository (and then reference that in your docker compose)

  • chellomere@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    2 months ago

    Hey fellow scener, cool project!

    Just a few thoughts/questions:

    • BTRFS and ZFS support real deduplication via copy on write, and would eliminate all current disadvantages of symlink and hardlink deduplication. It just works.
    • Why have it be one huge python source file? This is a serious code smell imo, and something you really should avoid doing as this can be a major maintenance burden.
    • tripflag@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
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      2 months ago

      BTRFS and ZFS support real deduplication via copy on write, and would eliminate all current disadvantages of symlink and hardlink deduplication. It just works.

      yeah that’s a good point, I’ll add an option to take advantage of this if you know you’re running on a filesystem where that works as intended.

      Why have it be one huge python source file?

      oh don’t worry, it’s all separate files during development – there’s a build-stage which bundles everything up into a single file for distribution. But thanks for the concern :D

      • chellomere@lemmy.worldEnglish
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        2 months ago

        Ah, so you have compiled it into one file? Didn’t know that was possible for python, what tool do you use for this?

        • tripflag@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
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          2 months ago

          sooo this is one of the things that started with someone saying “wouldn’t it be funny if…”

          if you open copyparty-sfx.py in a text editor, you’ll see how – but please make sure to use an editor which is able to handle about 600 KiB of comments which contain invalid utf8 / binary garbage 😁

          I ended up rolling my own packer since I wanted optimal encoding efficiency, and everything I could find would do stuff like base85 or ucs2 tricks, but it turns out python is perfectly happy with binary garbage in comments if you declare that the file is latin-1 so it realizes all hope is lost :D

          the only drawback of the sfx.py is that it needs to extract to $TEMP before running, so that’s the slight advantage of the zipapp (the .pyz alternative), but that suffers from some performance reduction in return, and is more hermetic (doesn’t let you swap out the bundled dependencies with fresh versions as easily if necessary)

          • chellomere@lemmy.worldEnglish
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            2 months ago

            Ah, reminds me of the old self-extracting gzip executable trick. I used that once a very long time ago to make a 4k linux intro, before I realized to be competitive I should switch to windows to be able to use Crinkler, which is superior even though the decompressor is part of the executable.

    • Suzune@ani.socialEnglish
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      2 months ago

      Just a remark from someone who runs ZFS since the beginning. Many people don’t like the deduplication feature because of its memory footprint.

      It’s also nice to have this feature without relying on a certain filesystem.

      • chellomere@lemmy.worldEnglish
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        2 months ago

        I assume you mean automatic deduplication? I haven’t used ZFS, but BTRFS does not have that. There are a variety of ways to perform deduplication, I have duperemove scheduled to run regularly.

        If ZFS is still capable of being instructed to perform deduplication when automatic deduplication is turned off, which it really should be able to do, then this should work even with it turned off.

  • TedZanzibar@feddit.ukEnglish
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    2 months ago

    This is very impressive and I’m highly likely to give it a whirl. My question is, though: would it be something that my very non-tech savvy wife could use?

    Eg. I’m thinking setup the app on her phone with a default location and when she asks me for a file I can just tell her that I’ve “put it in the app”, and she’ll be able to easily retrieve it. Also same thing but vice versa, though the video seems to cover that via the Android share menu…

    Again, super impressive. Good job!

    • tripflag@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
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      2 months ago

      I have a hunch that the true answer, to be honest, is “no” – at least with the current UI as it is. I’ve come to terms with not being the best at making intuitive user interfaces, so I went all-in on making it poweruser-friendly and efficiency instead.

      Yeah, there’s the android app for sending files to the server, and it’ll always send files to the same folder, so that part should be pretty solid. But actually grabbing files from the server, perhaps not so much. Not sure I’d risk it, but I’ll leave the decision to you hehe

      I’m not aware of any user-friendly android/iOS apps for connecting to a webdav / ftps / sftp server, but if those exist, then that would probably have been a good option!

  • AllHailTheSheep@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
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    2 months ago

    nice project! I’ll check it out! I’ve also really enjoyed your replies here. it’s obvious you really know your stuff. thanks!

  • gusgalarnyk@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    2 months ago

    Sometimes I feel so new to setting up my own digital ecosystem because I look at a thing and think “that’s so cool” but struggle to imagine it at home. So could someone help me understand.

    This would be a replacement for something like Google Drive or Proton Drive? The actions I would use this for would be:

    • sending files to friends
    • managing a collection of files like PDFs, music, ISO’s that could be accessible by my friends (or just my household)

    So I would spin this up on my NAS or my main PC and replace those services and accomplish those actions using this software?

    Are there other services or actions I’m missing? Am I misunderstanding the premise entirely?

    • RheumatoidArthritis@mander.xyzEnglish
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      2 months ago

      I think Copyparty would be great for that purpose. The only thing you’re missing is a way to expose it to the internet, such as a public IP or some tunnel

      • tripflag@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
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        2 months ago

        Yep! Depending on what your home connection looks like, you have a few options:

        if you are lucky enough to have your own private IP-address and are able to open ports, then you’re almost done already – you can put copyparty on some port (or keep the default 3923), and then anyone could connect to it by going to https://your.ip.address:3923/

        (with this approach, you will want to create your own HTTPS certificate so the traffic is properly encrypted – the best option here is to get a domain and get a certificate for the domain)

        however, if you are behind CGNAT, meaning your internet provider has given you a shared IP-address, then people cannot connect directly to your home-PC. One way around that issue is by setting up a machine somewhere on the internet which bridges the gap back home to your PC. Cloudflare offers this as service, and this is explained in the copyparty readme – see the “at home” section for one way to do that.

        if you are against using Cloudflare for idealistic reasons (they are becoming quite powerful since they run a whole lot of the internet), then you can set up a cheap VPS which serves the same purpose. That’s my setup, and how you are accessing the copyparty demo server right now – I have the cheapest VPS you can get from Hetzner. The VPS is running nginx, and it forwards the traffic to my homeserver through an SSH tunnel. I haven’t documented this approach in the copyparty readme, but I have a feeling a lot of other people have :>

    • muusemuuse@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
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      2 months ago

      Oh yea, copyparty could do that. I might just do that too. My issue is more how do I grant them access to my network to get the thing tough? I currently use wireguard profiles and lock down where they can reach with rules and shit on a firewalla on a per account basis but that’s really complex and inelegant. It works and would working copypasta, but I kind of wish there was a simple webUI where I could define what a WireGuard user should be able to reach on my network with simple checkboxes by rules I have created over time. Probably wouldn’t tie into firewalla nicely though it could be more likely with OPNsense.

      Hmm. Surely someone must have thought of that already. It would make adopting things like copypasta much simpler and less risky.

  • Pika@rekabu.ruEnglish
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    2 months ago

    Alright, you bought me with this Amazing presentation and nice that you have a demo!

  • sun@slrpnk.netEnglish
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    2 months ago

    The video are amazing. It’s entertaining and explains everything so it’s easily understood.

  • Kay Ohtie@pawb.socialEnglish
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    2 months ago

    Great job on something like this! I’ll probably give it a whirl soon, I like Nextcloud but find it clunky sometimes because it’s often a bit more than I need. Maybe breaking it up into Immich + this would help! Thank you for sharing your project!

    One thing to note, your comparison against Nextcloud has a partially-incorrect point regarding file upload max size. The client does upload chunking, so is unaffected by the Cloudflare issue as well, but I believe the web client is still affected, just not the apps. https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/admin_manual/configuration_files/big_file_upload_configuration.html#adjust-chunk-size-on-nextcloud-side

    I suspect a few others may be as well, but I’m only familiar with the Nextcloud one because that’s what I’ve been running, and discovered in making sure I could still upload video files recorded while out and about.

    Also love that it looks like a simpler install!

    • tripflag@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
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      2 months ago

      Thanks for the correction; confirmed that Nextcloud now does chunked uploading (with the web-client too). Fixed :>

      Good luck, and let me know if you hit any issues o/

  • KiwiTB@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    2 months ago

    Put out some in-depth docker instructions and this will be common use in a month. Good work.

  • danhab99@programming.devEnglish
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    2 months ago

    Oh my gawd what a README!! I’m on my phone and I was trying to scroll back to the top of it from the bottom and I just kept on scrolling… Holy shit I’m going to put this on my kanban board give it proper attention

    • cwista@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      2 months ago

      At this rate might be faster to read code than a read me. Or convert to a wiki style if this much details are really needed.

  • sexy_peach@feddit.orgEnglish
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    2 months ago

    OMG I just posted this to lemmy and saw it had already been posted. Great work! Amazing video!!

  • filcuk@lemmy.zipEnglish
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    2 months ago

    This is insane. I think I’d use ten different applications and still not cover these features. And I can host this. Using a single python file.