Copyparty – Turn almost any device into a file server

412•saint11•6h ago

Comments

aredox•6h ago

I saw "Python" and was going to comment a completely stand-alone* executable would be simpler, and then I scrolled and holy moly, there are a lot of features there! It would be quite some work to redo it in another lang.

*It already has no deps

Great job there. A nice tool you've made.

Edit: already adressed: https://github.com/9001/copyparty?tab=readme-ov-file#copypar...

9029•5h ago

I wonder if cosmopolitan libc[0] could be leveraged to create an actually portable executable™ without a rewrite, looks like someone has figured out compiling python 3.11.4 with it[1]

[0] https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan

[1] https://ahgamut.github.io/2021/07/13/ape-python/

leobuskin•4h ago

I have a small/insane project of mine, I wrote a compiler for Python (strict and static subset only) to WebAssembly (bc-to-bc approach, 1:1 CPython compat due to walking internals), than I do wasm2c to sandbox it + pledge and compiling with cosmopolitan into a miniature standalone thing (fast as hell). Just because you have zero dependencies and it's a pure Python and properly typed, lemme try next weekend as PoC. No promises, but this message clicked in my heart

noman-land•1h ago

skibz•6h ago

The author of this tool uploaded a YouTube video demonstrating it a few days ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15_-hgsX2V0

At one point in his demo, he uploads a file but terminates the upload more or less halfway. Then he begins downloading the file - which only progresses to the point it had been uploaded, and subsequently stalls indefinitely. And, finally, he finishes uploading the file (which gracefully resumes) and the file download (which is still running) seamlessly completes.

I found that particularly impressive.

nkrisc•5h ago

It's very impressive, particularly if you remember waking up to a failed download from the night before over dial-up.

squarefoot•4h ago

One of those things of the past even old nostalgic greybeards like me do not miss at all.

paulryanrogers•4h ago

I recall we had special apps to queue and schedule our downloads, and resume them where servers supported it. They were a dream compared to the boredom of staring at progress bars.

globular-toast•2h ago

The trouble is those special tools also needed downloading. So I could either sacrifice an evening's, ahem, download, or just chance it yet again. I eventually got an FTP client and it was like a superpower. BitTorrent was honestly more impressive to me than AI. Ah, the good old days.

Datagenerator•1h ago

The server that has moved countless Petabytes is glFTPd that allows FXP ( clients without bandwidth can initiate to transfer files from server to server ).

henry700•30m ago

Anyone remember DAP, Download Accelerator Plus? The colorful bars were nice. A part of my childhood, downloading shareware Windows games through dial-up.

MisterTea•2h ago

Most files were available via FTP which supported resume.

supportengineer•40m ago

FTP can't restart a PPP or SLIP connection.

henry700•29m ago

Not most. There was (and still is) so much locked behind HTTP on poor servers

floam•5h ago

“Race the beam”

That’s really cool. I’ve never seen that work before.

paxys•4h ago

Sounds like...BitTorrent.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF•4h ago

Sound like BitTorrent needs better PR then

reactordev•3h ago

Or… proper adherence to HTTP RFCs… with some added devx

jonny_eh•4h ago

Could be useful when launching a Doom shareware release.

yoavm•3h ago

I really didn't think I need this software but the video is so good that I'm gonna try hard to find a use case.

cat-whisperer•6h ago

I'm planning to use copyparty with Apple Shortcuts to sync my clipboards across devices - should make life a lot easier.

visil•6h ago

Absolutely amazing piece of software, the kind that makes you wish you had a use-case for that. Kudos to devs for taking security seriously, too.

By the way, the youtube video showcases this project really well.

jjkaczor•5h ago

Heh... I have one... have always wanted to make a little solar-powered "library" on my front-lawn...

(You know, like the neighbourhood "take-a-book, leave-a-book" little libraries, except for... digital content... It would fly an appropriate "skull + crossbones" flag...)

alias_neo•5h ago

I've wanted to do something like this, but I live within WiFi range of a school and am concerned someone would put something "harmful" on there so have never done so.

I created a PirateBox on a little GliNet router a while back with the intention of sharing public domain content but didn't do so beyond having a quick play around with it myself.

NKosmatos•5h ago

And like most things nowadays, it would get filled with highly illegal content within hours of you putting it there. The good old (innocent) days are gone and the society we’re living is not mature/educated enough for such ideas.

pkulak•5h ago

I don't think the idea is to put it on the global internet; just make it broadcast a wifi SSID.

jjkaczor•4h ago

As others have said - it would be standalone, not connected to the internet.

Have debated making it "read-only", but then I would be culpable for the curation of content...

That and perhaps I just don't want to encourage people loitering around in front of my house for long-transfers...

OTOH - this could be useful for essentially a "dead-drop" independent standalone box for, uh... "civil disobedience" reasons... (or a free alternative to those "prepper-internet-in-a-box" devices they are currently selling...)

echelon_musk•1h ago

It would still be physically located on your property with potentially illegal content on it. Sounds like a nightmare.

jjkaczor•18m ago

... well, I live in Canada - my understanding is that the maximum lifetime fine for copyright infringement is about $5,000 when files are shared for personal, non-commercial use...

Which sounds like alot, but if we factor in the extended family and cross-media sharing and the number of separate streaming services we all subscribe to across many many years, then this is a "deal"...

OTOH - I don't want to be the first case/person to help determine what precedent will be set if something actually gets taken to the end-state statutory damages..

MostlyStable•4h ago

Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but wouldn't this work great (albeit huge overkill) for the extremely common problem of trying to get files from one device to another (especially when one of those devices is a phone)? I see tools that are supposed to do that posted to HN all the time, with the comments usually pointing out one or another problem with any given utility. This seems like it would be pretty great self hosted, open source, solution to that problem?

mhuffman•3h ago

I have been having a lot of luck with Blip[0] recently regarding phone <-> laptop file transfer. My biggest issue so far is that it does support iOS, Android, MacOS, Windows ... but not Linux.

[0]https://blip.net/

wintermutestwin•1h ago

?? Airdrop works well.

ZeWaka•1h ago

Not everyone uses Apple products.

brewtide•1h ago

If you have not tried "localsend" I would highly recommend.

akk0•5h ago

Copyparty is an amazing piece of software. I recommend watching the recent YouTube video for an overview[0]. The developer is a personal friend and my household is proud to own one of 20 limited edition copyparty disc releases.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15_-hgsX2V0

pachouli-please•5h ago

I pop this up at an annual lan party amongst friends and its always a hit. Easy to use, easy to run, jam-packed with features

__bax•5h ago

..and with RSS feeds, very smart!

monkmartinez•5h ago

This is awesome. The readme is fun as heck and I just want to use the software based on that. I see nothing but complaints about nextcloud and others on r/selfhosted. I can't wait to try this out.

justusthane•3h ago

If you think the readme is fun, check out the demo video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15_-hgsX2V0

gknoy•1h ago

You weren't kidding. I was amused by the humor in the first few minutes, but then I got to its showcase of what you can do, and am just even more blown away. They weren't kidding about doing _just about everything_ pretty well.

Fuzzwah•41m ago

Thanks for the tip, I really did enjoy my scroll of the readme. This bit here really tickled me and set expectations so well:

> inverse linux philosophy -- do all the things, and do an okay job

angry_octet•5h ago

No deps is great, but what I'm looking for is no bugs, authentication and encryption. I want features turned off by default, configs tight as a drum.

neuroelectron•4h ago

Obviously, that is not this

bakugo•4h ago

If you're looking for security and stability, I would personally avoid this.

I took a glance at the code and it's... not great. It's absolutely full of short, meaningless 1-2 letter variable and function names that make it very hard to read and understand if you're not the original author. Wouldn't be surprised if it's full of security holes that will never be found.

snerbles•1h ago

According to the author it was mostly written on the train with his phone, that could explain the terse naming.

physicles•26m ago

This is a developer flex if I ever heard one

tripdout•44m ago

FWIW, it just had an XSS vulnerability fixed yesterday: https://github.com/9001/copyparty/security/advisories/GHSA-9...

jshprentz•24m ago

From the README FAQ section:

> i want to learn python and/or programming and am considering looking at the copyparty source code in that occasion

> do not

corndoge•2h ago

This is just good software

Fuzzwah•38m ago

This section of the readme really sets the expectation clearly:

> inverse linux philosophy -- do all the things, and do an okay job > - quick drop-in service to get a lot of features in a pinch > - some of the alternatives might be a better fit for you

This includes a link to this doco in the repo which is an incredible source of info: https://github.com/9001/copyparty/blob/hovudstraum/docs/vers...

irusensei•4h ago

I love seeing the term file server being used as opposed to "NAS". Its a server that serves files so its a file server!

Artoooooor•4h ago

It will be useful for me, thank you for the info.

justusthane•3h ago

Besides being useful, this just seems fun as heck after watching the demo video. I'm curious if folks have examples of other similarly fun/whimsical (but still useful!) software. I would submit https://fraidyc.at/ to the list.

srcreigh•3h ago

Take a look at the known issues section regarding iPhones. It’s good evidence of apples non competitive behaviour regarding browser support. PWA/websites are not allowed to be good on iPhones.

Shank•3h ago

As someone who has tried and failed to upload 2gb files on mobile data, only for the upload to fail at the last minute, this genuinely makes me want to play with it. There aren’t a lot of good drop-in solutions like this.

0xbadcafebee•1h ago

FTP/SFTP support resuming file uploads

sunshine-o•3h ago

In addition to being an awesome piece of software, their self hosted demo server is the fastest web app I have seen in a long time ... and this is while trending on HN !

Amazing.

Now I am wondering, would it be technically possible to build a similar app but based on the syncthing protocol?

I really like syncthing but it would be cool to have a version where you could just easily share specific files with peers.

aquova•3h ago

I have never heard of this before, but watching through their Youtube introduction, this might be one of the best pieces of software I've ever seen. Assuming it works as advertised, this could replace a few things I've been hosting myself.

vorgol•2h ago

> into a file server

This is underselling it by at least three orders of magnitude. This is astonishing tool, you have to watch the demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15_-hgsX2V0

bsenftner•2h ago

Is anyone else have their antivirus alarms go off on visiting this repo's URL?

echelon_musk•1h ago

This made me laugh and now I feel bad. Somehow I didn't expect HN users to be using antivirus software.

dmd•1h ago

[starts watching video] Ok cool it's a file browser, there's a million of the---s----e

[keeps watching video] what the fuck

wim•1h ago

This is awesome! The demo is really fun, nostalgic 90s vibes, it even lets me play chiptunes :). Keeping all dependencies optional and just making it a single file is great too!

1970-01-01•1h ago

Looks like another reinvention of the torrent.

Pxtl•48m ago

I have a decent library of ebooks and music albums I (legally!) purchased from myriad sources. This sounds like the perfect solution to get that properly onto my LAN in an accessible form.

actinium226•44m ago

From the "'frequently' asked questions

> i want to learn python and/or programming and am considering looking at the copyparty source code

> do not

darkwater•35m ago

This is the wet dream of every power-user. It has tons of features on top of the file server. And it also seems developed by a 10x (100x?) developer, I mean, just making/editing the video is a work of art and humor.

If the author is lurking here, are you doing all by yourself? Do you use any LLM/agent?

It really is impressive.

j-bos•25m ago

In the vid author says they started this pre useful LLMs (2019) on their phone.

johnisgood•31m ago

This is much more than just a file server. It looks pretty neat.

j-bos•22m ago

From the introductory video: "There is no telemetry and their never will be. Not even an auto-updater". And yet this is one of the most feature-full projects I've ever seen. Brilliant.

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