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  • Re[2]: Question About Free File Transfering Apps

    From Michael Grant@21:1/5 to All on Sat Jun 1 12:10:02 2024
    I use sshfs, works great to let me drop files on my server from my
    desktop. But I wouldn't call that "file sharing". I probably would call
    that a "network disk" or "remote mount".

    There's probably some formal definition out there, but when I think of
    file sharing, I think of someone proffering up a single file (or folder)
    and sharing it point-to-point with one or some small group of people.

    I have long been plagued by the problem if sitting in a room or on a
    boat with someone, 2 devices right next to one another, and no trivially
    easy way to send a file from one device to the other without say first uploading it to some mutual third party (e.g. whatsapp).

    sshfs isn't going to let you share files between say 2 phones, at least,
    not very easily if at all.

    By recommendation further up in this thread, I tried Google's Quick
    Share between my wife's phone and my phone. Followed all the
    instructions, did not work. Followed all the troubleshooting
    instructions. Nope, my device doesn't appear on her phone when I share,
    and neither the other way around. Searched the web, found a ton of
    people with same issue. It's DoA I'm afraid.

    Between family members, we have in the past shared files using a
    synology box and their Drive app. It works just like Dropbox except
    file is on your own infra. It's not open source though and I don't know
    how tied it actually is to Synology's infra. One certainly needs to be
    on the net to use it.

    To this day, I have yet ever to see an easy way to share a file between
    2 devices without full internet connectivity, except by say getting one
    to run an ftp or ssh server and ftp or ssh'ing over the file between
    local ip addrs (e.g. 192.168.x.y). I'd love to know some well know
    good, not-evil, open source app that runs on all the platforms that I
    could tell people to install to send them a file without using the
    internet. I can't really see any technical reason such an thing
    couldn't work, say over bluetooth or local IPs and maybe it does exist,
    I've just never run across such a thing. The key word here is EASY. I
    can't be hacking someone's phone for an hour just to transfer them a
    file.

    Michael Grant

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  • From songbird@21:1/5 to Michael Grant on Sat Jun 1 14:10:01 2024
    Michael Grant wrote:
    ...
    I have long been plagued by the problem if sitting in a room or on a
    boat with someone, 2 devices right next to one another, and no trivially
    easy way to send a file from one device to the other without say first uploading it to some mutual third party (e.g. whatsapp).

    USB stick or in the elder days i could wire up a
    RS232 cable and use that via serial ports.


    ...
    To this day, I have yet ever to see an easy way to share a file between
    2 devices without full internet connectivity, except by say getting one
    to run an ftp or ssh server and ftp or ssh'ing over the file between
    local ip addrs (e.g. 192.168.x.y). I'd love to know some well know
    good, not-evil, open source app that runs on all the platforms that I
    could tell people to install to send them a file without using the
    internet. I can't really see any technical reason such an thing
    couldn't work, say over bluetooth or local IPs and maybe it does exist,
    I've just never run across such a thing. The key word here is EASY. I
    can't be hacking someone's phone for an hour just to transfer them a
    file.

    if i'm taking that long to do something, i'll just find
    an easier method.

    for me sending an e-mail with the file attached
    might also do it.


    songbird

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  • From Michael Grant@21:1/5 to Dan Ritter on Sat Jun 1 23:10:01 2024
    Dan Ritter wrote:
    The web browser technology called WebRTC does that quite well,
    but for security reasons -- nobody wants a self-perpetuating
    worm -- you need an intermediary device to introduce the two
    participants but not to actually transfer the file.

    And so there is snapdrop.net, which you can choose to trust or
    you can run your own copy -- it's GPL3. Works between any two
    devices that run modern web browsers, including iPhones,
    Androids, Linux, Windows, Macs...

    Cool, I played with this today. So it seems like the website is called 'pairdrop.net' that works by default with the android app.

    Bit of a shame that it requires an external introducer site. I read a
    bunch of sites, nothing seems to explicitly say that the file transfer
    is direct between one and the other and not through some sort of "bent
    pipe". I'll tcpdump it at some point to convince myself.

    I did not set up my own server (yet), though I read through the
    instructions. Seems to be nodejs based and looks like a manual setup.
    I guess nobody has built a debian package yet...

    There are bluetooth solutions between Linux and Android and
    Windows, but Apple does not allow bluetooth file transfer from
    or to IOS with any operating systems they don't control.

    Did some research how to do this over bluetooth, apparently most android phones, certainly newer ones, you can pair the two phones and then use
    the share feature of one phone and choose bluetooth and share it. Built
    into the OS. Apparently works between phones and Windows. No internet connection required, perfect. Doesn't work between ios as you say.
    Learn something new every day!

    Thanks for that!

    Michael Grant

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