Comments on: Self-hosting YouSendIt

Question: Self-hosting YouSendIt

caek — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 08:00:48 -0800

Are there any ready-made solutions I can use to host a YouSendIt/Mediafire-like service myself, for personal use?

I've come up against the 100MB limit on the free YouSendIt service, and MediaFire has proven unreliable for me so far, and I figure I've got GBs of storage and bandwidth going to waste in my Dreamhost account, so I'd like to set up my own system to use instead of these services. (For those that don't know, they use a web browser to upload and download files which are too big for conventional email.)

I'm looking for a web interface like these systems, which I can upload files to using my browser[*]. Once uploaded, I would then be provided with a quasi-secure (i.e. randomized) URL like those generated by YouSendIt, to which I could point friends and colleagues. I need it to be compatible with the environment provided by Dreamhost, i.e. generic Apache/PHP/Perl with MySQL. Ideally the system would tidy up after itself, deleting files after, say, a week[**].

For the time being I'm going to be the only person using this, but if I can give my colleagues upload accounts so they don't have to use YouSendIt too, that would be great. I only want to do this, so unless there are compelling reasons, please don't recommend very large intranet systems/CMSes.

I realise the system I describe provides negligible security, and the storage provided is not robust. That's not a problem — I just want to shift large files around the internet.

[*] Bonus points if I can just point the system at a HTTP URL or it has is some other method that allows me to use tools actually meant for uploading files rather than my browser, such SCP or FTP

[**] Bonus points if I can change this from the default to, say, a day, a month, or "forever".

By: jellicle

jellicle — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 08:15:53 -0800

Uh... uh... If you're the only one using it, and you have a dreamhost account, just do it. You know, upload the files, and send people the URL. What's the problem?

--create directory on your hosting account (http://mysite.com/SUPERSECRET/)
--upload files via ftp or whatever
--send URL to people (http://mysite.com/SUPERSECRET/warez.exe)
--they download the file
--profit!

What is the problem here? If you don't disseminate the name of the sub-directory ("SUPERSECRET"), it's as secure as any password of equivalent length. You seem to be overthinking this.

By: caek

caek — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 08:17:27 -0800

I want something that will take care of deleting the file for me (in lieu of a notepad/calendar!)

By: winston

winston — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 08:18:58 -0800

I've seen lots of snippets of perl or php (etc.) code for uploading files to your web space through the browser. If all else fails, you could achieve requirement #2 by giving a file an arbitrary filename before uploading it.

By: blag

blag — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 09:19:13 -0800

You'll probably want to use FTP to upload the files since most shared webhosts use the default PHP upload_max_filesize value - which is around 2MB, I think.

In other words, you probably won't be able to upload files of more than 2MB without tinkering with the PHP setup.