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I have always been very sceptical of software moving to the cloud. Me too. After a disastrous episode with DropBox while travelling in foreign countries nearly

I have always been very sceptical of software moving to the cloud. Me too. After a disastrous episode with DropBox while travelling in foreign countries nearly a decade ago, I instituted my own File Server that's accessible via the Internet. All of my data is 'safe at home' with daily backups.

drevil-v2 6y ago
How do you secure it from unwanted access? I have been wanting to do something similar but I am unsure of the best practices
- tiagobraw 6y ago
  build a home vpn with self signed certificates
- Jedd 6y ago
  Either sftp/ssh with key-only logins (ie. no passwords), or Syncthing (depending on the volume of data, rate of changes, speed and costs of your network transits) I now keep my primary 'work' and 'private' collections (10-30g each) and a large shared set (350g) synced across desktop & laptop, and also 3 off-site archive servers, using Syncthing. This includes a literal satellite connection for one site. [0] https://syncthing.net/ https://syncthing.net/
- microtherion 6y ago
  Not sure if it's a "best practice", but you can get a fairly Dropbox'ish experience by running a nextcloud/owncloud instance. It even comes in docker containers, so setup is quite simple.
- jve 6y ago
  After setting up HTTPS, always being updated, introduce port knocking for HTTPS port : https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-port-knocking-to-hide-your-ssh-daemon-from-attackers-on-ubuntu https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-... Its less of a hassle to use something like nginx reverse proxy docker container in front of your web services, as it comes preconfigured with some best practices regarding TLS. (TLS1.2+ only by default) https://hub.docker.com/r/jwilder/nginx-proxy https://hub.docker.com/r/jwilder/nginx-proxy If you use docker, be sure to google around how to manage firewall with containers (must use DOCKER-USER chain instead of INPUT) Ofcourse, you will get a bit involved in setup step if you choose to tie nginx proxy, letsenccrypt and nextcloud containers. But search engine is your friend.
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  You could take a look at nextcloud. Seems promising, but I have just rudimentary experience. Does what I want though.
benhurmarcel 6y ago
> a disastrous episode with DropBox while travelling in foreign countries nearly a decade ago What was that? They cut your access because you logged from a different IP?
- simonblack 6y ago
  It was probably my fault in configuration, however the idea was to have a DropBox whereby I could put in files while travelling with my laptop and those files would be taken up with my home server. Except that it worked in reverse. My laptop was 'emptier' than the home server, so the home server's files were deleted to match the laptop. Hundreds of megabytes of files were destroyed before I managed to stop it. On top of that, I only had a 2 gig per month quota for internet access while travelling, and all the DropBox activity soon exhausted that in days. On later trips my own home server coped very well, with less overall unwanted activity.

drevil-v2 6y ago

How do you secure it from unwanted access? I have been wanting to do something similar but I am unsure of the best practices

tiagobraw 6y ago
build a home vpn with self signed certificates
Jedd 6y ago
Either sftp/ssh with key-only logins (ie. no passwords), or Syncthing (depending on the volume of data, rate of changes, speed and costs of your network transits) I now keep my primary 'work' and 'private' collections (10-30g each) and a large shared set (350g) synced across desktop & laptop, and also 3 off-site archive servers, using Syncthing. This includes a literal satellite connection for one site. [0] https://syncthing.net/ https://syncthing.net/
microtherion 6y ago
Not sure if it's a "best practice", but you can get a fairly Dropbox'ish experience by running a nextcloud/owncloud instance. It even comes in docker containers, so setup is quite simple.
jve 6y ago
After setting up HTTPS, always being updated, introduce port knocking for HTTPS port : https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-port-knocking-to-hide-your-ssh-daemon-from-attackers-on-ubuntu https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-... Its less of a hassle to use something like nginx reverse proxy docker container in front of your web services, as it comes preconfigured with some best practices regarding TLS. (TLS1.2+ only by default) https://hub.docker.com/r/jwilder/nginx-proxy https://hub.docker.com/r/jwilder/nginx-proxy If you use docker, be sure to google around how to manage firewall with containers (must use DOCKER-USER chain instead of INPUT) Ofcourse, you will get a bit involved in setup step if you choose to tie nginx proxy, letsenccrypt and nextcloud containers. But search engine is your friend.
raxxorrax 6y ago
You could take a look at nextcloud. Seems promising, but I have just rudimentary experience. Does what I want though.

benhurmarcel 6y ago

> a disastrous episode with DropBox while travelling in foreign countries nearly a decade ago What was that? They cut your access because you logged from a different IP?

simonblack 6y ago
It was probably my fault in configuration, however the idea was to have a DropBox whereby I could put in files while travelling with my laptop and those files would be taken up with my home server. Except that it worked in reverse. My laptop was 'emptier' than the home server, so the home server's files were deleted to match the laptop. Hundreds of megabytes of files were destroyed before I managed to stop it. On top of that, I only had a 2 gig per month quota for internet access while travelling, and all the DropBox activity soon exhausted that in days. On later trips my own home server coped very well, with less overall unwanted activity.