On 03/08/15 18:41, John Cohen wrote:

Apart from dropbox and other proprietary syncing software, how do you share large files (Say, 30 or 50GB) easily and securely with another person/client? I could buy wetransfer plus etc but I'd rather keep the files under my roof, saving time (not having to upload them somewhere else before sharing them) and not worrying about privacy issues.

I have an FTP server which works fine, but when it comes to customers and other teamworkers who aren't that tech savvy, they just prefer using wetransfer or similar services, where files are dropped and uploaded on a browser and users notified by mail with a download link. (plus FTP isn't secure, and SFTP is complex if using keys when sharing with customers)

I've tried the the following

F*EX

Pros:

1. pretty good because it's not PHP based and therefore hasn't got php

/ apache upload limitations. 2) The system feels pretty robust after trying it out and uses minimal resources.

Cons:

1. Pretty ugly, and customization is basic unless you're a guru (which I'm not)
2. Relies on a mail server. I have postfix installed but I'd rather

not have to rely on it as it's another layer of complication (namely emails arriving in clients spam folders, etc)

Zendto

Pros:

1. looks much more sophisticated in terms of functionality
2. looks very slick.

Cons:

1. Php based. upload limits are 2gb unless tweaked, but even then not

a great way to serve VERY large files (customers download interruptions etc) 2) Still relies on installing a mail server for notifications

Owncloud

Pros

1. Has a sync client for huge files, good for file sharing between

work colleagues 2) easy to use for everyone 3) can send notifications with external mail server

Cons:

1. Bit of a resource hog as it's designed for file syncing, not

sending a large file from A to B 2) When sharing with others outside the team (via links), apache and browser limitations still exist. I can't guarantee clients have an up-to-date browser, and I wouldn't rely on sharing a file that large via php.

Is there any other open source solution that you've tried which is both robust for huge file sharing and easy for the average folk to use? Any personal experiences?

No recent personal experience - sorry.

Thoughts. It may be simpler and quicker to go via a third party e.g. gdrive, dropbox, megaupload etc. It may well be that transfer speeds between each site and the proprietory server may be better than you can achieve in a site to site or peer to peer transfer. Any such site to site or peer to peer transfer relies on both machines being up and running and not busy doing something else at the time.

I've used filezilla in the past. It was simple ish and is cross platform. You can resume failed transfers I think. Simple enough for your customers?

Can you do what you want with rsync? It will resume if a transfer fails with the correct nudging! https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/2445/resume-transfer-of-a-single-fi...

NB - I seem to recall that big file transfers getting interrupted was a problem in days of yore so the resumability of any system was important.

Could a bittorrent system be cajoled to do what you want/need it to do?

Good luck Steve