this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2025
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introducing copyparty, the FOSS file server (www.youtube.com)
submitted 4 days ago by tripflag@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
137 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I made a video about copyparty, the selfhosted fileserver I've been making for the past 5 years.

The main focus of the video is the features, but it also touches upon configuration. Was hoping it would be easier to follow than the readme on github... not sure how well that went, but hey :D

This video is also available to watch on the copyparty demo server, as a high-quality AV1 file and a lower-quality h264.

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[–] theorangeninja@sopuli.xyz 1 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

I played around with copyparty and I have to say it is just awesome! The config is just fun to mess around with and everything feels snappy.

But I ran into an issue with FTP (probably just something I configured incorrectly) and could not find a discussion for that. I should probably start an issue on Github but as a non-developer I'm not sure how to do that in the correct way.

Edit: I managed to "solve" the problem. Apparently the user uploading to a subfolder over FTP needs the move permission for the folder above said subfolder.

[–] filcuk@lemmy.zip 5 points 2 days ago

This is insane. I think I'd use ten different applications and still not cover these features. And I can host this. Using a single python file.

[–] KiwiTB@lemmy.world 19 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Put out some in-depth docker instructions and this will be common use in a month. Good work.

[–] TehNomad@piefed.social 1 points 1 hour ago

The docker compose file worked great for me.

[–] Womble@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

Yup, I tried to run the docker image with the suggested docker command and it errored out for lack of a config file (though it did offer a fix in the logs for mounting the current directory as read/write)

[–] Dojan@pawb.social 13 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I bumped into copyparty the other month when looking for a software that could let me transfer files to a friend with the ability to pause/resume. Didn't bother with it, tried another software instead. Never really got it to work so I gave up on it.

Bumped into the YouTube video today, decided to give copyparty a shot, damn sir you've written a fine piece of software. It's so easy to get up and configure. The UI is a bit janky, but charming at the same time. Thanks for all the hard work!

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[–] shiftymccool@programming.dev 9 points 2 days ago

Ho... Ly... Shit... This is great! The UI is a bit confusing at first but doesn't take long to get what's going on. I might even be disappointed with a UI revamp 😁 I can't believe how much functionality this has. It's already replacing some processes I have for mounting drives and backing up files. Maybe I missed something, but my only complaint would be the lack of an automatic one-way folder sync in the Party UP! app.

I'm blown away, great job!

[–] Pall@piefed.social 17 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Is there a way to help translate the UI.

I would like to help translate it into Danish.

[–] cows_are_underrated@feddit.org 12 points 3 days ago

Would also be willing to help translate the UI.

[–] buddascrayon@lemmy.world 16 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Holy shit this is so unbelievably full featured it's not even funny. This is going to rattle some big names. I wonder how long till they try to shut it down because it's better than anything commercially available.

[–] tiramichu@sh.itjust.works 15 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I haven't even tried it yet, but just from the video you can tell it's going to be insanely good. I'm so impressed.

It's the first bit of software I've seen in a long time where I took one look and immediately thought "Fuck me, I need that!"

I use Unraid for my NAS server and just on the off-chance I checked the Unraid community 'app store' and someone's already created a Docker definition for it, published just today! The hype is real

I'll be giving this a shot

[–] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 51 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

You made this on your phone on the bus ride to and from work.

I cleaned the cat box yesterday and considered that an accomplishment.

Fuck.

[–] markstos@lemmy.world 12 points 3 days ago

Congrats on the cat box cleaning!

[–] utopiah@lemmy.world 11 points 3 days ago

Thanks for making the video but also for providing non Youtube link. Maybe there is a PeerTube server that would enjoy hosting it.

[–] jhoward@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 3 days ago

Well done! This is exactly what I've been looking for! And it's fun to use and has an aesthetic that reminds me of browsing ftp servers back in the day. And these themes?! I love the whimsy mixed with actual usability.

And its a damn good file server so far: fast, easy to use, makes reasonable security choices, and accessible in the ways I want (rclone mount)

[–] doostee@programming.dev 2 points 2 days ago

I see flake.nix, i install.

[–] perishthethought@piefed.social 23 points 4 days ago (1 children)

The fact you mention security features, without ever saying it's 'super secure' tells me you know a lot about what you're doing. I'm so sick of apps like this that start with "most secure app on the net" but you know they're delusional. Thank you, going to check this out.

[–] tripflag@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

so uhh, sorry for the late response to this -- was going to reply much earlier, but then suddenly it became more timely than ever...

the good news is, I'm fairly confident in how it handles the filesystem and permissions, preventing unauthorized access to files.

but the part I'm a bit less sure about is sanitizing user data; the kind of vulnerabilities where someone uploads a malicious file and bad stuff happens if you then open that file in a certain way, or someone sends you a malicious link and trick you into clicking it -- in other words, the kind of vulnerabilities which require the attacker to have a certain level of access already, or that requires tricking you into doing something.

...and with version 1.18.5 released just now, we got a prime example of exactly one of those. Really unfortunate timing, but it's a blessing to have so many new and curious eyes on it to spot these sooner rather than later. It is what it is.

[–] johntash@eviltoast.org 46 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Your readme looks super in depth, thanks for that! I haven't watched the video yet but will later.

I didn't see it mentioned from a quick glance, but is either sftp or ftps supported?

[–] tripflag@lemmy.world 37 points 4 days ago (2 children)

SFTP is not currently on the roadmap, but it's not entirely implausible.

FTPS is supported, but it requires an optional dependency to be installed (pyopenssl), so it's not available in the Windows EXE. And I just realized that the dependency is currently not present inside the docker images either, so I'll get that fixed right away.

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[–] craftrabbit@lemmy.zip 9 points 3 days ago

Don't believe it. This is easily too good to be true.

[–] sun@slrpnk.net 7 points 3 days ago

The video are amazing. It's entertaining and explains everything so it's easily understood.

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 9 points 3 days ago (5 children)

Everyone loves CP. Tell all your friends about CP.

[–] Mubelotix@jlai.lu 3 points 3 days ago

Every single time I have seen one of your comments, you have disappointed me

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[–] chellomere@lemmy.world 26 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (3 children)

Hey fellow scener, cool project!

Just a few thoughts/questions:

  • BTRFS and ZFS support real deduplication via copy on write, and would eliminate all current disadvantages of symlink and hardlink deduplication. It just works.
  • Why have it be one huge python source file? This is a serious code smell imo, and something you really should avoid doing as this can be a major maintenance burden.
[–] tripflag@lemmy.world 28 points 4 days ago (6 children)

BTRFS and ZFS support real deduplication via copy on write, and would eliminate all current disadvantages of symlink and hardlink deduplication. It just works.

yeah that's a good point, I'll add an option to take advantage of this if you know you're running on a filesystem where that works as intended.

Why have it be one huge python source file?

oh don't worry, it's all separate files during development -- there's a build-stage which bundles everything up into a single file for distribution. But thanks for the concern :D

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[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 33 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Clearly a labour of love 👍

Maybe support for some music streaming apps (subsonic?) would be cool?

[–] tripflag@lemmy.world 18 points 4 days ago (1 children)

That's a neat idea -- I've heard that a lot of stuff uses the subsonic API under the hood, so I'll see what it would take to become compatible with that. At first glance it looks like I'd have to mine and index way more information about audio files, but could still be doable :>

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[–] RheumatoidArthritis@mander.xyz 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I have a question, and I want to emphasise thar this is not criticism but a request for dive into technicalities.

In the video you mentioned copyparty has an one-way sync tool. Is there a good reason why it's not two-way, or is this just something you weren't motivated to do?

[–] tripflag@lemmy.world 17 points 3 days ago (4 children)

No worries, good question :>

The problem with bidirectional filesync is that it's an absolutely massive can of worms, very easy to mess up, and the consequences of messing up are usually the worst kind (loss of data). There's an insane amount of edgecases to keep in mind, and you need to get every edgecase right every single time, otherwise you might wipe someone's vacation photos, or suddenly downgrade someone's keepass database to an older version... And stuff like syncing multiple devices to the same server makes it balloon further.

I've started becoming more confident in copyparty's filesystem-index database, but it's still just a hint/guideline, with the filesystem being the only source of truth -- it's still not something I'd trust with tracking sync-state against one or more clients.

The bigger guys who offer bidirectional sync (nextcloud, syncthing, etc.) have spent years perfecting their logic, so I'd like to leave this in their capable hands.

[–] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 3 days ago

Sync is one of those things that seems like it should be trivial but is actually super complicated.

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[–] HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 8 points 3 days ago

Elderly raspberry pi B [✓]

Large portable drive gathering dust [✓]

Guess I'm setting up a locally hosted file server in the near future.

[–] danhab99@programming.dev 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Oh my gawd what a README!! I'm on my phone and I was trying to scroll back to the top of it from the bottom and I just kept on scrolling... Holy shit I'm going to put this on my kanban board give it proper attention

[–] cwista@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago

At this rate might be faster to read code than a read me. Or convert to a wiki style if this much details are really needed.

[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

Thank you so very much. I needed to transfer some files locally yesterday and didn't have a NAS set up. So I thought I would quickly set up a samba share on my pop-os media server so my spouse (windows) and I (mint) could swap/store files on the fly in the future. It took me 25 minutes and I almost gave up because my config file was having issues.

This looks sooooo much nicer. May every road rise up to meet you

[–] cravl@slrpnk.net 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I would add PairDrop to your list to have bookmarked. It's completely web-based so no download required and thus fully cross-platform. It also works across different networks (i.e. over the internet) by pairing devices or creating a room. Basically Apple AirDrop, but universal and on steroids.

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[–] uzay@infosec.pub 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Look cool! I think you should consider putting a screenshot of the UI somewhere near the top of the README

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[–] pwalker@discuss.tchncs.de 15 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

you even mention ladybird as browser, nice 😎

[–] tripflag@lemmy.world 19 points 4 days ago (2 children)

it's such an impressive project! Amazing what they've accomplished in so little time, and so important too -- we need as many options as we can get.

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[–] sun@slrpnk.net 4 points 3 days ago

Have been playing around with it for a bit and it's AMAZING.

[–] piranhaconda@mander.xyz 3 points 3 days ago

Ok this is too damn cool. Will be checking it out soon, but moving to a new apartment this week so I probably shouldn't dive into new distractions just yet...

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