There is a periodic meeting of linux users in my area where everyone brings laptops and connects to a LAN. Just wondering if I want to share files with them, what are decent options? Is FTP still the best option or has anything more interesting emerged in the past couple decades? Guess I would not want to maintain a webpage so web servers are nixed. It’s mainly so ppl can fetch linux ISO images and perhaps upload what they have as well.
(update) options on the table:
- ProFTPd
- OpenSSH SFTP server (built into SSHd)
- SAMBA
- webDAV file server - maybe worth a look, if other options don’t pan out; but I imagine it most likely does not support users uploading
I started looking at OpenSSH but it’s very basic. I can specify a chroot dir that everyone lands in, but it’s impossible to give users write permission in that directory. So there must be a subdir with write perms. Seems a bit hokey… forces people to chdir right away. I think ProFTPd won’t have that limitation.
It’s all fun and games until someone brings a USB 2.0 thumb drive.
The file could transferred over the LAN and the network de-saturated faster the file could be copied off a USB 2 drive.
I haven’t seen a USB 2.0 drive in 15 or so years. So I’d say you’re pretty safe… And even if that were the case, it’s still preferable vs hogging the connection for a single file.
USB transfer only affects you with slow speeds until the transfer is done. Network transfer affects the entire party with slow speeds until the transfer is done.
It’s the obvious choice if you’re having saturation issues, even at 2.0 speeds.
The event is ~2—3 hours or so. If someone needs the full Debian (80 gb!), I think over USB 2 it would not transfer in that timeframe. USB 2 sticks may be rare but at this event there are some ppl with old laptops that have no USB 3 sockets. A lot of people plug into ethernet. And the switch looks somewhat more serious than a 4-port SOHO… it has like 20+ ports with fans, so I don’t get the impression ethernet congestion would be an issue.