Selfhosted @lemmy.world paequ2 @lemmy.today 1w ago

Google Drive alternative?

Hello! How are folks self-hosting online storage, similar to Google Drive?

Some options I've found:

https://filebrowser.org/ (maintenance-only mode)
https://www.seafile.com/en/home/ (weird disk layout scares me)
https://tinyfilemanager.github.io/ (i like simple!)
https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash

A bunch more: https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted?tab=readme-ov-file#file-transfer---web-based-file-managers

I mainly just need basic file management features. I don't plan to share files outside of my tailscale VPN. I do need to support multiple users though.

I'm not considering Nextcloud because that seems too big. I'm also not considering syncthing for this project because I don't want copies on multiple devices.

I'm currently just using ssh+nautilus and that's worked great for just me, but something similar to Google Drive would be easier to onboard my family.

35 comments

Nextcloud, despite you're not considering it. You can disable or not install the apps you don't need, like Calendar, Contacts, Photos, Dashboard, Activity, etc.

There's also a fork of Filebrowser, called Filebrowser Quantum, which I've been interested in, though haven't tried yet: https://github.com/gtsteffaniak/filebrowser
- Have you ever used OwnCloud, before the fork?
  
  I hated administrating OwnCloud, and that's kept me away from NextCloud. OwnCloud was a big, resource hogging, hot mess; did NextCloud do a huge refactor and clean it up?
  
  I didn't use OwnCloud, but I haven't had much issue with Nextcloud. I run it bare metal on a pi 4 and haven't had issues with resource hogging. Getting php to work when the update to php 8 was a bit of a pain but eventually figured it out.
  
  No, I haven't tried OC. Lot of people still prefer it over NC. I think both have come quite a long way since then.
  
  I wouldn't say Nextcloud is hard to maintain, even less so if you keep the number of apps to a minimum. The initial setup may require some work, but small instances are mostly plug and play.
  
  Note that I've never used AIO. If going for containers, the community images are better, despite AIO advertised as the official method. I recommend using Podman, check out
  
  https://github.com/0ranki/nextcloud-previews
  
  Also a blog post: https://oranki.net/posts/2025-01-02-self-hosting-my-way5-nextcloud/
I've run Nextcloud since OwnCloud was the only option, with zero issues on any setup - be it direct, via snap, or via docker.

(EDIT: Out of interest I looked up the first subdomain I can remember using - it sent my username the login details in February 2015 so that's over a decade now!).

On a cheap VPS, a dedicated box, and now self hosted since I finally have a decent enough connection to support it. Ran out of storage on the VPS, then the 4TB dedicated box, now on 120TB self hosted (Nextcloud only using around 6TB mind you). CPU and RAM were never an issue.

Mostly documents (PDF, ODS, ODT), photos and videos from jobs, and some people (myself included) use the storage to back up their phone gallery.

I use shared and private folders, shared and private calendars, and shared and private contact lists on Android, iOS, and PCs (Windows and Linux). I have a public upload directory for customers to send us files and often share files directly using expiring read only links.

It's easy and it works, no idea wtf people are doing to have so much drama with it.
Whatever the alternative - or even googledrive - if you first store your files in a cryptomator folder then it really doesn't matter where you sync them to.
- I started to go down that path, but then I heard that there were problems with data corruption
  
  No issues so far, got sources?
  Anyway, always follow 3-2-1 for backups.
I don't get the sudden interest in Filebrowser. Never heard of the project before it went into Maintenance, now it seems like everyone wants to use it.
Here's what I've used and can recommend:

samba - just a network share

Nextcloud - full featured cloud suite (calendar, contacts, etc)

owncloud infinite scale (OCIS) or the Euro fork Open Cloud - the POSIX driver has a flat file structure and still supports users and shared data; OCIS is designed for larger installations, but running on a smaller, single instance totally works too

Since you rejected NextCloud, check out the other two. I'm switching from NextCloud to OCIS right now, and I may end up using OpenCloud if development looks stable.
- Have not tried opencloud yet, but one thing that I find interesting is that it doesn't need a DB. Plan to test. Currently have nextcloud and find the installation a bit of a pain.
  
  Yeah, I'm liking it so far, but I'm still very much in the testing phase, I don't have any "real" data in it yet.
Why does the storage layer of seafile scare you? Are you also scared of databases and prefer storing things in raw txt files? The difference is the same. You get certain features in return:

Versioning is possible (so each file can have a history you can roll back)

Sync is very fast

It can sync incremental changes even of big files

You still have access via:

Web

Synced locally using Seafile Client

WebDAV

Mounted as network filesystem anywhere using SeaDrive.
- Are you also scared of databases and prefer storing things in raw txt files?
  
  Yes, actually. 😅 I can't manage a database for more than a few weeks before I screw it up or want to easily edit something and stop using it.
  
  I don't think databases are bad. I think I'm too much of a fuckup to manage one.
  
  LOL, ok, fair 😁
  
  You should in any case consider your backup strategy. If you have reliable backups, your fuckups can't be as bad anymore. If you don't have reliable backups, a "raw" storage doesn't help you either. Maybe even the contrary: you won't notice, if individual files get corrupted or even lost until it's too late. (Not talking about disk corruption, against which the right filesystem can guard you.... but I am not sure you trust filesystems either 😛)
- I'm not OP and am a dev, but also prefer flat files. Here's my reasoning:
  
  versioning - I use snapshots in my filesystem (BTRFS), which is more than enough, and have a git hosting solution for things I care about more
  
  sync is plenty fast on OCIS and Samba, it's just kinda slow on Nextcloud; I'm sure Seafile is better, but it's not something I do frequently anyway, especially since backups from devices is automatic and uses a different, fast system
  
  incremental - not my use case, most of my files either never change (movies) or are small (text flees)
  
  My main concerns with Seafile specifically are:
  
  developed by a Chinese company and doesn't seem particularly open to contributions
  
  mostly written in C, so there's a good chance of security vulnerabilities
  
  documentation about the disk format isn't very open, so third party tools don't really exist
  
  main target is larger orgs, so I'm unlikely to get very good support
  
  With flat files, I can easily switch to a different service if my needs change.
I've been trying Peergos lately, and I'm pretty happy with it so far.

Google's nagging offers for free trials of Gemini made me realize that I was basically handing data over to an AI company 🤦🏻‍♂️ So I've been looking for an alternative too
Why not just cockpit with the file browser add-on?
- cockpit
  
  A what now? 🔎 https://cockpit-project.org/
  
  https://github.com/cockpit-project/cockpit-files
Nextcloud, hands down.
I personally really like sftpgo and I mount it via webdav.

I used seafile first, then nextcloud. Each for a couple of years and had significant problems with both.
- I’m also using SFTPGo at home and it works well.
- SFTPGo is such an awesome project, never had any problems with it.
WebDAV would work. Mounts directly in the Finder in MacOS.
https://github.com/kd2org/karadav

Nextcloud client/app compatible WebDAV server with a lightweight file browser webUI, and multi-user support.

Should be the closest thing to Google Drive without actually running Nextcloud.

The only issue is it looks like the Nextcloud iOS clients don't work.
I use Nextcloud, but as you said it's a bit big, and with each update it's slowly turning into more of the entire G-Suite.

I've used filebrowser, but be aware that until just a few days ago, it gave out access to a shell. Even with that turned off, I'd be very weary of allowing access from out of the VPN. I had a server pwned with filebrowser appearing to be the vector, and to my memory console access was disabled for the account most likely breached.
I selfhost Cryptpad, but it sounds like it may be more than you're looking for.
FileBrowser has a fork under development: https://github.com/gtsteffaniak/filebrowser

I currently use copyparty. It's not the prettiest, but it's fast and the documentation on GitHub is extensive. The maintainer is also very friendly and helpful.
Nextcloud got too bulky for me, and in my search I tried a number of different options before installing OpenCloud without realizing it isn't fully finished yet. That said, it still works well enough for my use case.
I use filestash. I like it because it can connect with so many backends. In my setup it uses samba behind the scenes all the shares permissions are in a single configuration and I don't have to worry about a different set of user credentials.
There's a new version (fork?) of filebrowser dubbed "quantum" if that's your thing https://github.com/gtsteffaniak/filebrowser
Zipline
- There are several projects named zipline. I think you're talking about this one though: https://github.com/diced/zipline

35 comments