Hello to all passionate selfhosting enthusiasts! Today, however, I have to ask you about a problem that can’t be fully solved by a selfhosted solution. But I believe it’s still closely related to selfhosting.
I’d like to automate mirroring some files/catalogues to different storage providers and then obtain public sharing links for each of them. So I’m looking at Rclone. It supports a variety of different storage providers, which is nice. But is there any structured information about which of them support sharing files via public links? There are just too many of them to quickly check them all.
So if there is no such data, I’ll probably also slowly try them out on my own to see which ones are suited for me, and post the results in the comments if you don’t mind! Maybe.
Well, ideally I’d certainly like to share these files with a selfhosted solution without relying on any 3rdparty «cloud» storage, but that’s not possible without either TLD and public IP or additional software besides web browser on the client side, right? So I’m looking for a somewhat pragmatic solution for now.
Also, maybe you have some useful tips on configuring Rclone for this task in general? I’m considering using union feature with create_policy = all to upload to several storages simultaneously, but is it possible to get public links in this setup?
Another option is a $5 vps and domain. Install caddy on it with caching, and point it at your local storage using SSH. Meets your criteria of self hosting the storage, but only caches on the VPS for performance. You could even use rclone to mount the files if you want.
More manual than the other options, but much simpler mental model and an excellent platform to learn how things work. Gives you the chance to also host a static website too.
Well, while it’s probably the most sane solution, it doesn’t suit me at all, unfortunately. For me, there is a strict requirement: it must be free of charge, without any payment at all. Guess I should have mentioned it explicitly in the original post, but I did not expect such an immediate direction shift!
Understood.
Use afraid.org or another forever-free dynamic dns service using their free subdomain, set up a computer, pi, or vm in a “demilitarized zone” on your router and forward ports 80 and 443 to it.
Put your files on that machine and back them up incase it ever gets hacked. Install one of the many web-based self hosted file servers, or, like I said, just caddy pointed at a folder of files, and set up some sort of monitoring for the systems cpu load and network bandwidth. Set up auto-updates.
Old-school, zero service cost, and zero cloud service dependency. Downsides are required monitoring, users see your home IP, and if it gets hacked, you have to wipe it. Did it that way for years.