Hello selfhosted! Sometimes I have to transfer big files or a large amounts of small files in my homelab. I used rsync but specifying the IP address and the folders and everything is bit fiddly. I thought about writing a bash script but before I do that I wanted to ask you about your favourite way to achieve this. Maybe I am missing out on an awesome tool I wasn’t even thinking about.
Edit: I settled for SFTP in my GUI filemanager for now. When I have some spare time I will try to look into the other options too. Thank you for the helpful information.
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- sftp for quick shit like config files off a random server because its easy and is on by default with sshd in most distros
- rsync for big one-time moves
- smb for client-facing network shares
- NFS for SAN usage (mostly storage for virtual machines)
Resilion Sync
Ye old samba share.
But I do like using Nextcloud. I use it for syncing my video projects so I can pick up where I left off on another computer.
Samba Bamba!!
scpChecks username… yeah that tracks
scp is deprecated.
SCP, the protocol, is deprecated. scp, the command, just uses the SFTP protocol these days. I find its syntax convenient.
Oh does it? I didn’t realize that. I’ve just switched over to rsync completely.
Since OpenSSH version 9.0, so like mid '22. So as long as you’re not running something more out of date than that.
rsync if it’s a from/to I don’t need very often
More common transfer locations are done via NFS
Rsync and NFS for me.
And me.
As a lazy person, I just prefer
sftpon thunar.By “homelab”, do you mean your local network? I tend to use shared folders, kdeconnect, or WebDAV.
I like WebDAV, which i can activate on Android with DavX5 and Material Files, and i use it for Joplin.
Nice thing about this setup is that i also have a certificate secured OpenVPN, so in a pinch i can access it all remotely when necessary by activating that vpn, then disconnecting.
I’d say use something like zeroconf(?) for local computer names. Or give them names in either your dns forwarder (router), hosts file or ssh config. Along with shell autocompletion, that might do the job. I use scp, rsync and I have a NFS share on the NAS and some bookmarks in Gnome’s file manager, so i just click on that or type in scp or rsync with the target computer’s name.
Syncthing
People have already covered most of the tools I typically use, but one I haven’t seen listed yet that is sometimes convenient is
python3 -m http.serverwhich runs a small web server that shares whatever is in the directory you launched it from. I’ve used that to download files onto my phone before when I didn’t have the right USB cables/adapters handy as well as for getting data out of VMs when I didn’t want to bother setting up something more complex.Magic wormhole is pretty dead simple https://magic-wormhole.readthedocs.io/en/latest/welcome.html#installation
I use this a lot at work for moving stuff between different test vms, as you don’t need to check IPs/hostnames
As I understand it, the establishing of the connection is reliant on a relay server. So this would not work on a local network without a relay server and would, by default, try to reach a server on the internet to make connections.
rsync is indeed fiddly. Consider SFTP in your GUI of choice. I mount the folder I need in my file browser and grab the files I need. No terminal needed and I can put the folders as favorites in the side bar.
If you want to use the terminal though, there is
scpwhich is supported on both windows and Linux.Its just
scp [file to copy] [username]@[server IP]:[remote location]That’s essentially the same as rsync
Just slower if you already have some of the files there.
Syncthing and/or ftp.
WinSCP for editing server config
Rsync for manual transfers over slow connections
ZFS send/receive for what it was meant for
Samba for everything else that involves mounting on clients or other servers.
