miltonx wrote: ↑Thu May 05, 2022 7:24 am
Thank you for this further explanation. I thought Phoenix meant a complicated web server setup process, but the ftpd + port forwarding solution seems reasonably practical. I will look up router settings. Some nice reading expected.
Busybox ftpd, in a terminal run ...
mkdir /ftp
tcpsvd -vE 0.0.0.0 21 ftpd -w -a root /ftp
and in another terminal or using a ftp client you can ftp localhost and log in using 'anonymous' and upload/downfiles. BUT that assigns anonymous logins to userid root, so you can also cd /etc/ and download passwd ...etc files. SO you don't really want to do that. Instead its better to create a userid specifically for ftp, that is restricted from what it can see/do (what folders it can access). Fatdog supports creating such userids as its more real *nix like,
So more like
tcpsvd -vE 0.0.0.0 21 ftpd -w -a ftpuser /tmp/ftp
assuming you'd created/were using a userid of 'ftpuser'
Once you're comfortable that your ftp server is relatively secure then access your router admin pages and set Port Forwarding for port 21 (which is what FTP uses) to your PC/laptops IP (ifconfig should show its local IP such as 192.168.1.5 or whatever). Then anyone externally will also be able to ftp into that ... but using the external IP - that something like https://whatismyipaddress.com/ should show what that is.
There are services such as https://account.dyn.com/ where you can pick a friendly name and have that mapped to a IP, so others can use that name instead of having to type in/remember a IP.
For a always on home server, something like a pi or old laptop tend to use much less power than old desktop systems, otherwise over the course of a whole year the electricity consumption/cost can mount up.
Another choice is old BBS style, get a copy of syncterm, pick one of the thousands of BBS's around and log into that, where you can chat, share files, messages, play games ...etc.
Other choices is to setup a ssh server and use scp ... which is similar to regular cp (copy) but where one end as a remote host address (scp abc.txt user@some.host.com:/remote-folder/abc.txt).
Or use a site/service that caters for uploading/sharing files, but more often will entail ads and monetising your email/contact details etc.